THE NORMAN HALL.--SOCIAL SENTIMENTS UNDER THE
ANGLO-NORMANS.--DOMESTIC AMUSEMENTS.--CANDLES
AND LANTERNS.--FURNITURE.--BEDS.--OUT-OF-DOOR
RECREATIONS.--HUNTING.--ARCHERY.--CONVIVIAL INTERCOURSE AND
HOSPITALITY.--TRAVELLING.--PUNISHMENTS.--THE STOCKS.--A NORMAN
SCHOOL.--EDUCATION.
Alexander Neckam has left us a sufficiently clear description of the
Norman hall. He says that it had a vestibule or screen (_vestibulum_),
and was entered through a porch (_porticus_), and that it had a court,
the Latin name of which (_atrium_) he pretends was derived from _ater_
(black), “because the kitchens used to be placed by the side of the
streets, in order that the passers-by might perceive the smell of
cooking.” This explanation is so mysterious, that we may suppose the
passage to be corrupt, but the _coquinæ_ of which Neckam is speaking
are evidently cook’s shops. In the interior of the hall, he says, there
were posts (or columns) placed at regular distances. The few examples
of Norman halls which remain are divided internally by two rows of
columns. Neckam enumerates the materials required in the construction
of the hall, which seem to show that he is speaking of a timber
building. A fine example of a timber hall, though of a later period,
is, or was recently, standing in the city of Gloucester, with its
internal “posts” as here described. There appears also to have been an
inner court-yard, in which Neckam intimates that poultry were kept. The
whole building, and the two court-yards, were no doubt surrounded by a
wall, outside of which were the garden and orchard. The Normans appear
to have had a taste for gardens, which formed a very important adjunct
to the mansion, and to the castle, and are not unfrequently alluded to
in mediæval writers, even as far back as the twelfth century. Giraldus
Cambrensis, speaking of the castle of Manorbeer (his birthplace), near
Pembroke, said that it had under its walls, besides a fine fish-pond,
“a beautiful garden, inclosed on one side by a vineyard, and on the
other by a wood, remarkable for the projection of its rocks, and the
height of its hazel-trees.” In the twelfth century, vineyards were not
uncommon in England.
[Illustration: _No. 70. A Man warming himself._]
A new characteristic was introduced into the Norman houses, and
especially into the castles, the massive walls of which allowed
chimney-flues to be carried up in their thickness. The piled-up fire
in the middle of the hall was still retained, but in the more private
apartments, and even sometimes in the hall itself, the fire was made
on a hearth beneath a fire-place built against the side wall of the
room. An illumination, in the Cottonian MS. Nero, C. iv., which we
have already had occasion to refer to more than once, represents a
man warming himself at a fireplace of this description. It appears,
from a comparison of this (No. 70) with similar figures of a later
period, that it was a usual practice to sit at the fire bare-legged
and bare-foot, with the object of imbibing the heat without the
intermediation of shoes or stockings. On a carved stall in Worcester
Cathedral, represented in our cut No. 71, which belongs to a later date
(the latter part of the fourteenth century), and the scene of which is
evidently intimated to be in the winter season, a man, while occupied
in attending to the culinary operations, has taken off his shoes in
order to warm himself in this manner. The winter provisions, two
flitches of bacon, are suspended to the left of him, and on the other
side the faithful dog seems to enjoy the fire equally with his master.
From a story related by Reginald of Durham, it appears to have been a
practice among the ladies to warm themselves by sitting over hot water,
as well as by the fire.[20] In some of the illuminations of mediæval
manuscripts, ladies are represented as warming themselves, even in the
presence of the other sex, in a very free and easy manner. The fuel
chiefly employed was no doubt still wood, but the remark of Giraldus
Cambrensis that the name of Coleshulle (in Flintshire) signified the
hill of coals (_carbonum collis_) implies that mineral coals were then
known.
[Illustration: _No. 71. Indications of Cold Weather._]
It is hardly necessary to remark that, in the change in the mode of
living which had suddenly taken place in this country, a form of
society had also been introduced abruptly which differed entirely
from that of the Anglo-Saxons. On the continent, throughout the now
disjointed empire which had once been ruled by Charlemagne, there had
arisen, during the tenth century, amid frightful misgovernment and
the savage invasions of the northmen, a new form of society, which
received the name of feudalism, because each landholder held, either
direct from the crown or from a superior baron, by a feudal tenure, or
fee (_feodum_, _feudum_), which obliged him to military service. Each
baron had sovereignty over all those who held under him, and, in turn,
acknowledged the nominal sovereignty of a superior baron or of the
crown, which the latter practically was only sometimes able to enforce.
One great principle of this system was the right of private warfare;
and, as not only did the great barons obtain land in feudal tenure in
different countries under different independent princes, but the lesser
holders of sub-fees obtained such tenures under more than one superior
lord, and as these, when they quarrelled with one superior, made war
upon him, and threw themselves upon the protection of another who felt
bound to defend his feudatory, war became the normal state of feudal
society, and peace and tranquillity were the exceptions. One effect of
feudalism was to divide the population of the country into two distinct
classes--the landholders, or fighting-men, who alone were free, and
the agricultural population, who had no political rights whatever,
and were little better than slaves attached to the land. The towns
alone, by their own innate force, preserved their independence, but
in France the influence of feudalism extended even over them, and the
combined hostility of the crown and the aristocracy finally overthrew
their municipal independence. Feudalism was brought into England by the
Normans, but it was never established here so completely or so fully
as on the continent. The towns here never lost their independence,
but they sided sometimes with the aristocracy, and sometimes with
the crown, until finally they assisted greatly in the overthrow
of feudalism itself. Yet the whole territory of England was now
distributed in great fees, and in sub-fees; amid which a few of the old
Saxon gentry retained their position, and many of the Norman intruders
married the Saxon heiresses, in order, as they thought, to strengthen
the right of conquest; but the mass of the agricultural population were
confounded under the one comprehensive name of _villains_ (_villani_),
and reduced to a much more wretched condition than under the
Anglo-Saxon constitution. The light in which the villain was regarded
in the twelfth century in England is well illustrated in a story told
in the English “Rule of Nuns,” printed by the Camden Society. A knight,
who had cruelly plundered his poor villains, was complimented by one
of his flatterers, who said, “Ah, sir! truly thou dost well. For men
ought always to pluck and pillage the churl, who is like the willow--it
sprouteth out the better for being often cropped.”
The power and wealth of the great Norman baron were immense, and
before him, during a great part of the period of which we are now
speaking, the law of the land was a mere nominal institution. He was
in general proud, very tyrannical, and often barbarously cruel. A type
of the feudal baron in his worst point of view is presented to us in
the character of the celebrated Robert de Belesme, who succeeded his
father Roger de Montgomery in the earldom of Shropshire, and of whom
Henry of Huntingdon, who lived in his time, tells us, “He was a very
Pluto, Megæra, Cerberus, or anything that you can conceive still more
horrible. He preferred the slaughter of his captives to their ransom.
He tore out the eyes of his own children, when in sport they hid their
faces under his cloak. He impaled persons of both sexes on stakes. To
butcher men in the most horrible manner was to him an agreeable feast.”
Of a contemporary feudal chieftain in France, the same writer tells
us, “When any one, by fraud or force, fell into his hands, the captive
might truly say, ‘The pains of hell compassed me round.’ Homicide
was his passion and his glory. He imprisoned his own countess, an
unheard-of outrage; and, cruel and lewd at once, while he subjected
her to fetters and torture by day, to extort money, he forced her to
cohabit with him by night, in order to mock her. Each night his brutal
followers dragged her from her prison to his bed, each morning they
carried her from his chamber back to her prison. Amicably addressing
any one who approached him, he would plunge a sword into his side,
laughing the while; and for this purpose he carried his sword naked
under his cloak more frequently than sheathed. Men feared him, bowed
down to him, and worshipped him.” Women of rank are met with in the
histories of this period who equalled these barons in violence and
cruelty; and the relations between the sexes were marked by little
delicacy or courtesy. William the Conqueror beat his wife even before
they were married. The aristocratic class in general lived a life of
idleness, which would have been insupportable without some scenes
of extraordinary excitement, and they not only indulged eagerly in
hunting, but they continually sallied forth in parties to plunder. They
looked upon the mercantile class especially as objects of hostility;
and, as they could seldom overcome them in their towns, they waylaid
them on the public roads, deprived them of their goods and money, and
carried them to their castles, where they tortured them in order to
force them to pay heavy ransoms. The young nobles sometimes joined
together to plunder a fair or market. On the other hand, men who could
not claim the protection of aristocratic blood for their evil deeds,
established themselves under that of the wild forests, and issued
forth no less eagerly to plunder the country, and to perpetrate every
description of outrage on the persons of its inhabitants, of whatever
class they might be, who fell into their power. The purity of womanhood
was no longer prized, where it was liable to be outraged with impunity;
and immorality spread widely through all classes and ranks of society.
The declamations of the ecclesiastics and the satires of the moralists
of the twelfth century may give highly-painted pictures, but they lead
us to the conclusion that the manners and sentiments of the female sex
during the Norman period were very corrupt.
Nevertheless, feudalism did boast of certain dignified and generous
principles, and there were noble examples of both sexes, who shine
forth more brightly through the general prevalence of vice and of
selfishness and injustice. It was in the walls of the feudal castle,
amid the familiar intercourse which the want of amusement caused
among its inmates, that the principle, or practice, arose, which we
in modern times call gallantry, and which, though at first it only
led to refinement in the forms of social manners, ended in producing
refinement of sentiments. It was among the feudal aristocracy, too,
that originated the sentiment we term chivalry, which has varied
considerably in its meaning at different periods, and which, in
its best sense, existed more in romance than in reality. After the
possession of personal strength and courage, the quality which the
feudal baron admired most, was what was termed generosity, but which
meant lavish expenditure and extravagance; it was the contrast between
the baron, who spent his money, and the burgher or merchant, who gained
it, and laid it up in his coffers. “Noblemen and gentlemen,” says the
“Rule of Nuns,” already quoted, “do not carry packs, nor go about
trussed with bundles, nor with purses; it belongs to beggars to bear
bag on back, and to burgesses to bear purses.” In fact, it was the
principle of the feudal aristocracy to extort their gains from all who
laboured and trafficked, in order to squander them on those who lived
in idleness, violence, and vice. Under such circumstances, a new class
had arisen which was peculiar to feudal society, who lived entirely
upon the extravagance of the aristocracy, and who had so completely
abandoned every sentiment of morality or shame, that, in return for
the protection of the nobles, they were the ready instruments of any
base work. They were called, among various other names, _ribalds_
(_ribaldi_) and _letchers_ (_leccatores_); the origin of the first of
these words is not known, but the latter is equivalent to dish-lickers,
and did not convey the sense now given to the word, but was applied
to them on account of their gluttony. We have already seen how, in
the crowd which attended the feasts of the princes and nobles, the
letchers (_lecheurs_) were not content with waiting for what was sent
away from table, but seized upon the dishes as they were carried from
the kitchen to the hall, and how it was found necessary to make a new
office, that of ushers of the hall, to repress the disorder. “In those
great courts,” says the author of the “Rule of Nuns,” “they are called
letchers who have so lost shame, that they are ashamed of nothing, but
seek how they may work the greatest villany.” This class spread through
society like a great sore, and from the terms used in speaking of them
we derive a great part of the opprobrious words which still exist in
the English language.
The early metrical romances of the Carlovingian cycle give us an
insight into what were considered as the praiseworthy features in the
character of the feudal knight. In Doon of Mayence, for example, when
(p. 74) the aged count Guy sends his young son Doon into the world, he
counsels him thus: “You shall always ask questions of good men, and
you shall never put your trust in a stranger. Every day, fair son, you
shall hear the holy mass, and give to the poor whenever you have money,
for God will repay you double. Be liberal in gifts to all; for the more
you give, the more honour you will acquire, and the richer you will be;
for a gentleman who is too sparing will lose all in the end, and die
in wretchedness and disgrace; but give without promising wherever you
can. Salute all people when you meet them, and if you owe anything, pay
it willingly, but if you cannot pay, ask for a respite. When you come
to the hostelry, don’t stand squabbling, but enter glad and joyously.
When you enter the house, cough very loud, for there may be something
doing which you ought not to see, and it will cost you nothing to give
this notice of your approach, while those who happen to be there will
love you the better for it. Do not quarrel with your neighbour, and
avoid disputing with him before other people; for if he know anything
against you, he will let it out, and you will have the shame of it.
When you are at court, play at tables, and if you have any good points
of behaviour (_depors_), show them; you will be the more prized, and
gain the more advantage. Never make a noise or joke in church; this is
only done by unbelievers, whom God loves not. Honour all the clergy,
and speak fairly to them, but leave them as little of your goods as
you can; the more they get from you, the more you will be laughed
at; you will never profit by enriching them. And if you wish to save
your honour undiminished, meddle with nothing you do not understand,
and don’t pretend to be a proficient in what you have never learnt.
And if you have a valet, take care not to seat him at the table by
you, or take him to bed with you; for the more honour you do to a low
fellow, the more will he despise you. If you should know anything that
you would wish to conceal, tell it by no means to your wife, if you
have one; for if you let her know it, you will repent of it the first
time you displease her.” The estimate of the female character at this
period, even when given in the romances of chivalry, is by no means
flattering.
With these counsels of a father, we may compare those of a mother to
her son. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 18), when the youthful
hero leaves his home to repair to the court of Charlemagne, the duchess
addresses her son as follows: “My child,” she said, “you are going to
be a courtier; I require you, for God’s love, have nothing to do with
a treacherous flatterer; make the acquaintance of wise men. Attend
regularly at the service of holy church, and show honour and love to
the clergy. Give your goods willingly to the poor; be courteous, and
spend freely, and you will be the more loved and cherished.” On the
whole, higher sentiments are placed in the mouth of the lady than
in that of the baron. We must, however, return to the outward, and
therefore more apparent, characteristics of social life during the
Norman period.
The in-door amusements of the ordinary classes of society appear not
to have undergone much change during the earlier Norman period, but
the higher classes lived more splendidly and more riotously; and, as
far as we can judge, they seem to have been coarser in manners and
feelings. The writer of the life of Hereward has left us a curious
picture of Norman revelry. When the Saxon hero returned to Brunne, to
the home of his fathers, and found that it had been taken possession
of by a Norman intruder, he secretly took his lodging in the cottage
of a villager close by. In the night he was roused from his pillow by
loud sounds of minstrelsy, accompanied with boisterous indications of
merriment, which issued from his father’s hall, and he was told that
the new occupants were at their evening cups. He proceeded to the hall,
and entered the doorstead unobserved, from whence he obtained a view
of the interior of the hall. The new lord of Brunne was surrounded by
his knights, who were scattered about helpless from the extent of their
potations, and reclining in the laps of their women. In the midst of
them stood a jougleur, or minstrel, alternately singing and exciting
their mirth with coarse and brutal jests. It is a first rough sketch of
a part of mediæval manners, which we shall find more fully developed
at a somewhat later period. The brutality of manners exhibited in the
scene which I have but imperfectly described, and which is confirmed by
the statements of writers of the following century, soon degenerated
into heartless ferocity, and when we reach the period of the civil wars
of Stephen’s reign, we find the amusements of the hall varied with the
torture of captive enemies.
In his more private hours of relaxation, the Norman knight amused
himself with games of skill or hazard. Among these, the game of chess
became now very popular, and many of the rudely carved chessmen of the
twelfth century have been found in our island, chiefly in the north,
where they appear to have been manufactured. They are usually made of
the tusk of the walrus, the native ivory of Western Europe, which was
known popularly as whale’s bone. The whalebone of the middle ages is
always described as white, and it was a common object of comparison
among the early English poets, who, when they would describe the
delicate complexion of a lady, usually said that she was “white as
whale’s bone.” These, as well as dice, which were now in common use,
were also made of horn and bone, and the manufacture of such articles
seems to have been a very extensive one. Even in the little town of
Kirkcudbright, on the Scottish border, there was, in the middle of
the twelfth century, a maker of combs, draughtsmen, chessmen, dice,
spigots, and other such articles, of bone and horn, and stag’s horn
appears to have been a favourite material.[21]
In the Chanson de Roland, Charlemagne and his knights are represented,
after the capture of Cordova from the Saracens, as sitting in a shady
garden, some of them playing at tables, and others at chess.
_Sur palies blancs siedent cil cevalers,_
_ As tables juent pur els esbaneier,_
_ E as eschecs li plus saive e li veill_
_ E escremissent cil bacheler leger._
Chess, as the higher game, is here described as the amusement of the
chiefs, the old, and the wise; the knights play at tables, or draughts;
but the young bachelors are admitted to neither of these games, they
amuse themselves with bodily exercises--sham fights.
[Illustration: _No. 72. A Norman Lantern._]
Although such games were not unusually played by day, they were
more especially the amusements which employed the long evenings of
winter, and candles appear at this time to have been more generally
used than at a former period. They still continued to be fixed on
candlesticks, and not in them, and spikes appear sometimes to have
been attached to tables or other articles of furniture, to hold them.
Thus, in one of the pretended miracles told by Reginald of Durham, a
sacristan, occupied in committing the sacred vestments to the safety
of a cupboard, fixed his candle on a stick or spike of wood on one
side (_candelam ... in assere collaterali confixit_), and forgetting
to take away the candle, locked the cupboard door, and only discovered
his negligence when he found the whole cupboard in flames. Another
ecclesiastic, reading in bed, fixed his candle on the top of one of
the sides (_spondilia_) of his bed. Another individual bought two small
candles (_candelas modicas_) for an _obolus_, but the value of the
coin thus named is not very exactly known. The candle appears to have
been usually placed at night in or on the chimney, or fire-place, with
which the chamber was now furnished. In Fierabras (p. 93), a thief,
having obtained admission in the night to the chamber of the princess
Floripas, takes a candle from the chimney, and lights it at the fire,
from which we are led to suppose that it was usual to keep the fire
alight all night.
_Isnelement et tost vient à la ceminée,_
_Une chandelle a prinse, au fu l’a alumée._
On another occasion (p. 67), a fire is lit in the chimney of Floripas’s
chamber, and afterwards a table is laid there, and dinner served.
Lanterns were now also in general use. The earliest figure of a lantern
that I remember to have met with in an English manuscript is one
furnished by MS. Cotton. Nero, C. iv., which is represented in our cut
(No. 72). It differs but little from the same article as used in modern
times; the sides are probably of horn, with a small door through which
to put the candle, and the domed cover is pierced with holes for the
egress of the smoke.
[Illustration: _No. 73. Occupations of the Ladies._]
We begin now to be a little better acquainted with the domestic
occupations of the ladies, but we shall be able to treat more fully
of these in a subsequent chapter. Not the least usual of these was
weaving, an art which appears to have been practised very extensively
by the female portion of the larger households. The manuscript Psalter
in Trinity College, Cambridge, furnishes us with the very curious
group of female weavers given in our cut No. 73. It explains itself,
as much, at least, as it can easily be explained, and I will only
observe that the scissors here employed are of the form common to
the Romans, to the Saxons, and to the earlier Normans; they are the
Saxon _scear_, and this name, as well as the form, is still preserved
in that of the “shears” of the modern clothiers. Music was also a
favourite occupation, and the number of musical instruments appears to
be considerably increased. Some of these seem to have been elaborately
constructed. The manuscript last mentioned furnishes us with the
accompanying figure of a large organ, of laborious though rather clumsy
workmanship.
[Illustration: _No. 74. A Norman Organ._]
In the dwellings of the nobles and gentry, there was more show
of furniture under the Normans than under the Saxons. Cupboards
(_armaria, armoires_) were more numerous, and were filled with vessels
of earthenware, wood, or metal, as well as with other things. Chests
and coffers were adorned with elaborate carving, and were sometimes
inlaid with metal, and even with enamel. The smaller ones were made of
ivory, or bone, carved with historical subjects. Rich ornamentation
generally began with ecclesiastics, and we find by the subjects carved
upon them that the earlier ivory coffers or caskets belonged to
churchmen. When they were made for lords and ladies, they were usually
ornamented with subjects from romance, or from the current literature
of the day. The beds, also, were more ornamental, and assumed novel
forms. Our cut No. 75, taken from MS. Cotton. Nero, C. iv., differs
little from some of the Anglo-Saxon figures of beds. But the tester
bed, or bed with a roof at the head, and hangings, was now introduced.
In Reginald of Durham, we are told of a sacristan who was accustomed to
sit in his bed and read at night. One night, having fixed his candle
upon one of the sides of the bed (_supra spondilia lectuli suprema_),
he fell accidentally asleep. The fire communicated itself from the
candle to the bed, which, being filled with straw, was soon enveloped
in flame, and this communicated itself with no less rapidity to the
combination of arches and planks of which the frame of the bed was
composed (_ligna materies archarum et asserum copiosa_). Above the
bed was a wooden frame (_quædam tabularia stratura_), on which he was
accustomed to pile the curtains, dorsals, and other similar furniture
of the church. Neckam, in the latter part of the twelfth century,
describes the chamber as having its walls covered with a curtain, or
tapestry. Besides the bed, he says, there should be a chair, and at the
foot of the bed a bench. On the bed was placed a quilt (_culcitra_) of
feathers (_plumalis_), to which is joined a pillow; and this is covered
with a pointed (_punctata_) or striped (_stragulata_) quilt, and a
cushion is placed upon this, on which to lay the head. Then came sheets
(_lintheamina, linceuls_), made sometimes of rich silks, but more
commonly of linen, and these were covered with a coverlet made of green
say, or of cloth made of the hair of the badger, cat, beaver, or sable.
On one side of the chamber was a _perche_, or pole, projecting from
the wall, for the falcons, and in another place a similar perch for
hanging articles of dress. It was not unusual to have only one chamber
in the house, in which there were, or could be made, several beds, so
that all the company, even if of different sexes, slept in the same
room. Servants and persons of lower degree might sleep unceremoniously
in the hall. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 270), Huon, his
wife, and his brother, when lodged in a great abbey, sleep in three
different beds in the same room, no doubt in the guest-house. Among the
Anglo-Normans, the chamber seems to have frequently, if not generally,
occupied an upper floor, so that it was approached by stairs.
[Illustration: _No. 75. A Norman Bed._]
The out-of-doors amusements of this period appear in general to have
been rude and boisterous. The girls and women seem to have been
passionately fond of the dance, which was their common amusement at
all public festivals. The young men applied themselves to gymnastic
exercises, such as wrestling, and running, and boxing; and they had
bull-baitings, and sometimes bear-baitings. On Roman sites, the ancient
amphitheatres seem still to have been used for such exhibitions; and
the Roman amphitheatre at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, was known by the
title of “The Bull-ring” down to a very late period. The higher ranks
among the Normans were extraordinarily addicted to the chace, to secure
which they adopted severe measures for preserving the woods and the
beasts which inhabited them. Every reader of English history knows the
story of the New Forest, and of the fate which there befell the great
patron of hunting--William Rufus. The Saxon Chronicle, in summing up
the character of William the Conqueror, tells us that he “made large
forests for the deer, and enacted laws therewith, so that whoever
killed a hart or a hind, should be blinded. As he forbade killing the
deer, so also the boars; and he loved the tall stags as if he were
their father. He also appointed concerning the hares, that they should
go free.” The passion of the aristocracy for hunting was a bane to the
rural population in more ways than one. Not only did they ride over
the cultivated lands, and destroy the crops, but wherever they came
they lived at free quarter on the unfortunate population, ill-treating
the men, and even outraging the females, at will. John of Salisbury
complains bitterly of the cruelty with which the country-people were
treated, if they happened to be short of provisions when the hunters
came to their houses. “If one of these hunters come across your land,”
he says, “immediately and humbly lay before him everything you have
in your house, and go and buy of your neighbours whatever you are
deficient of, or you may be plundered and thrown into prison for your
disrespect to your betters.” The weapons generally used in hunting the
stag were bows and arrows. It was a barbed arrow which pierced the
breast of the second William, when he was hunting the stag in the wilds
of the New Forest. Our cut (No. 76), from the Trinity College Psalter,
represents a horseman hunting the stag. The noble animal is closely
followed by a brace of hounds, and just as he is turning up a hill, the
huntsman aims an arrow at him. As far as we can gather from the few
authorities in which it is alluded to, the Saxon peasantry were not
unpractised hands at the bow. We find them enjoying the character of
good archers very soon after the Norman conquest, under circumstances
which seem to preclude the notion that they derived their knowledge of
this arm from the invaders. In the miracles of St. Bega, printed by Mr.
G. C. Tomlinson, in 1842, there is a story which shows the skill of
the young men of Cumberland in archery very soon after the entrance
of the Normans; and the original writer, who lived perhaps not much
after the middle of the twelfth century, assures us that the Hibernian
Scots, and the men of Galloway, who were the usual enemies of the men
of Cumberland, “feared these sort of arms more than any others, and
called an arrow, proverbially, a _flying devil_.” We learn from this
and other accounts, that the arrows of this period were barbed and
fledged, or furnished with feathers. It may be observed, in support
of the assertion that the use of bows and arrows was derived from the
Saxons, that the names _bow_ (_boga_) and _arrow_ (_arewe_), by which
they have always been known, are taken directly from their language;
whereas, if the practice of archery had been introduced by the Normans,
it is probable we should have called them _arcs_ and _fletches_.
[Illustration: _No. 76. A Stag-hunt._]
After the entrance of the Normans, we begin to find more frequent
allusions to the convivial meetings of the middle and lower orders in
ordinary inns or private houses. Thus, we have a story in Reginald
of Durham, of a party of the parishioners of Kellow, who went to a
drinking party at the priest’s, and passed in this manner a great
portion of the night.[22] This occurred in the time of bishop Geoffrey
Rufus, between 1133 and 1140. A youth and his monastic teacher are
represented on another occasion as going to a tavern, and passing the
whole of the night in drinking, till one of them becomes inebriated,
and cannot be prevailed on to return home. Another of Reginald’s
stories describes a party in a private house, sitting and drinking
round the fire. We are obliged thus to collect together slight and
often trivial allusions to the manners of a period during which we have
so few detailed descriptions. Hospitality was at this time exercised
among all classes freely and liberally; the misery of the age made
people meet together with more kindliness. The monasteries had their
open guest-houses, and the unknown traveller was seldom refused a
place at the table of the yeoman. In towns, most of the burgesses or
citizens were in the habit of receiving strangers as private lodgers,
in addition to the accommodation afforded in the regular _hospitia_
or taverns. Travelling, indeed, was more usual under the Normans than
it had been under the Saxons, for it was facilitated by the more
extensive use of horses. But this also brought serious evils upon the
country; for troops of followers and rude retainers who attended on
the proud and tyrannical aristocracy, were in the habit of taking up
their lodgings at will and discretion, and living upon the unfortunate
householders without pay. It had been, even during the Anglo-Saxon
period, a matter of pride and ostentation among men of rank--especially
the king’s officers--to travel about accompanied with a great multitude
of followers,[23] and this practice certainly did not diminish under
the Normans. But, whether in great numbers or in small, the travellers
of the twelfth century sought the means of amusing themselves during
their journey, and these amusements resembled some of those which were
employed at the dinner-table--they told stories, or repeated episodes
from romances, or sung, and they sometimes had minstrels to accompany
them. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, Huon, on his journey from his
native city to Paris, asks his brother Gerard to sing, to enliven them
on the road,--
_Cante, biau frere, pour nos cors esjoir._--Huon de Bordeaux, p. 18.
But Gerard declines, because a disagreeable dream of the preceding
night has made his heart sorrowful. When we turn from romance to sober
history, we learn from Giraldus Cambrensis how Gilbert de Clare,
journeying from England to his great possessions in Cardiganshire,
was preceded by a minstrel and a singing-man, who played and sang
alternately, and how the noise they made gave notice of his approach to
the Welshmen who lay in ambush to kill him.
[Illustration: _No. 77. Norman Travellers._]
[Illustration: _No. 78. Cars._]
A group of Norman travellers is here given from the Cottonian MS.
Nero, C. iv. It is intended to represent Joseph and the Virgin Mary
travelling into Egypt. The Virgin on the ass, or mule, is another
example of the continued practice among ladies of riding sideways.
Mules appear to have been the animals on which ladies usually rode at
this period. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 60), when Huon,
immediately after his marriage, proceeds on his journey homeward,
he mounts his young duchess on a mule; so also, in the romance of
Gaufrey (p. 62), the princess Flordespine is mounted on “a rich mule,”
the trappings of which are rather minutely described. “The saddle
was of ivory, inset with gold; on the bridle there was a gem of such
power that it gave light in the darkness of night, and whoever bore
it was preserved from all disease; the saddle-cloth (_sambue_) was
wonderfully made; she had thirty little bells behind the _cuirie_,
which, when the mule ambled, made so great a melody that harp or
viol were worth nothing in comparison.” The Anglo-Norman historian,
Ordericus Vitalis, has preserved a legend of a vision of purgatory,
in which the priest who is supposed to have seen it describes, among
other suffering persons, “a crowd of women who seemed to him to be
innumerable. They were mounted on horseback, riding in female fashion,
with women’s saddles.... In this company the priest recognised several
noble ladies, and beheld the palfreys and mules, with the women’s
litters, of others who were still alive.” The Trinity College Psalter
furnishes us with the two figures of cars given in our cut No. 78; but
they are so fanciful in shape, that we can hardly help concluding they
must have been mere rude and grotesque attempts at imitating classical
forms.
[Illustration: _No. 79. The Stocks._]
The manuscript last mentioned affords us two other curious
illustrations of the manners of the earlier half of the twelfth
century. The first of these (No. 79) represents two men in the stocks,
one held by one leg only, the other by both. The men to the left are
hooting and insulting them. The second, represented in our cut No.
80, is the interior of a Norman school. We give only a portion of the
original, where the bench, on which the scholars are seated, forms
a complete circle. The two writers, the teacher, who seems to be
lecturing _viva voce_, and his seat and desk, are all worthy of notice.
We have very little information on the forms and methods of teaching
in schools at this period, but schools seem to have been numerous in
all parts of the country. We have more than one allusion to them in the
_naïve_ stories of Reginald of Durham. From one of these we learn that
a school, according to a custom “now common enough,” was kept in the
church of Norham, on the Tweed, the parish priest being the teacher.
One of the boys, named Aldene, had incurred the danger of correction,
to escape which he took the key of the church door, which appears to
have been in his custody, and threw it into a deep pool in the river
Tweed, then called Padduwel, and now Pedwel or Peddle, a place well
known as a fishing station. He hoped by this means to escape further
scholastic discipline, from the circumstance that the scholars would be
shut out by the impossibility of opening the church door. Accordingly,
when the time of vespers came, and the priest arrived, the key of the
door was missing, and the boy declared that he did not know where it
was. The lock was too strong and ponderous to be broken or forced, and,
after a vain effort to open the door, the evening was allowed to pass
without divine service. The story goes on to say, that in the night
St. Cuthbert appeared to the priest, and inquired wherefore he had
neglected his service. On hearing the explanation, the saint ordered
him to go next morning to the fishing station at Padduwel, and buy the
first net of fish that was drawn out of the river. The priest obeyed,
and in the net was a salmon of extraordinary magnitude, in the throat
of which was found the lost key of Norham church.
[Illustration: _No. 80. A Norman School._]
Among the aristocracy of the land, the education of the boy took what
was considered at that time a very practical turn--he was instructed
in behaviour, in manly exercises and the use of arms, in carving at
table--then looked upon as a most important accomplishment among
gentlemen--and in some other branches of learning which we should
hardly appreciate at present; but school learning was no mediæval
gentleman’s accomplishment, and was, in that light, quite an exception,
unless perhaps to a certain degree among the ladies. In the historical
romances of the middle ages, a prince or a baron is sometimes able
to read, but it is the result of accidental circumstances. Thus, in
the romance of the “Mort de Garin,” when the empress of the Franks
writes secret news from Paris to duke Garin, the head of the family of
the Loherains, it is remarked, as an unusual circumstance, that the
latter was able to read, and that he could thus communicate the secret
information of the empress to his friends without the assistance of
a scholar or secretary, which was a great advantage, as it prevented
one source of danger of the betrayal of the correspondence. “Garin the
Loherain,” says the narrator, “was acquainted with letters, for in his
infancy he was put to school until he had learned both Roman (French)
and Latin.”
_De letres sot li Loherens Garins;_
_Car en s’enfance fu à escole mis,_
_Tant que il sot et Roman et Latin._
--Mort de Garin, p. 105.
Education of this kind was bestowed more generally on the
_bourgeoisie_--on the middle and even the lower classes; and to these
school-education was much more generally accessible than we are
accustomed to imagine. From Anglo-Saxon times, indeed, every parish
church had been a public school. The Ecclesiastical Institutes (p. 475,
in the folio edition of the Laws, by Thorpe) directs that “Mass-priests
ought always to have at their houses a school of disciples; and if
any one desire to commit his little ones (_lytlingas_) to them for
instruction, they ought very gladly to receive them, and kindly teach
them.” It is added that “they ought not, however, for that instruction,
to desire anything from their relatives, except what they shall be
willing to do for them of their own accord.” In the Ecclesiastical
Canons, published under king Edgar, there is an enactment which would
lead us to suppose that the clergy performed their scholastic duties
with some zeal, and that priests were in the habit of seducing their
scholars from each other, for this enactment (p. 396) enjoins “that
no priest receive another’s scholar without leave of him whom he
previously followed.” This system of teaching was kept up during at
least several generations after the Norman conquest.