A HISTORY
OF
DOMESTIC MANNERS AND SENTIMENTS
IN ENGLAND
During the Middle Ages.

A HISTORY
OF
DOMESTIC MANNERS
AND
SENTIMENTS
IN ENGLAND
During the Middle Ages.
By THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A., F.S.A.,
Hon. M.R.S.L., &c.;
Corresponding Member of the Imperial Institute of France
(Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres).
WITH
Illustrations from the Illuminations in Contemporary Manuscripts
and other Sources,
DRAWN & ENGRAVED BY F. W. FAIRHOLT, Esq., F.S.A.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1862.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY JAMES S. VIRTUE,
CITY ROAD.

TO
THE LADY LONDESBOROUGH,
THIS
Volume is Dedicated
AS
A TESTIMONY OF
VERY SINCERE RESPECT,
BY
THE AUTHOR.

To the LADY LONDESBOROUGH.

Dear Lady Londesborough,

The object of the following pages is to supply what appeared to be a want in our popular literature. We have histories of England, and histories of the Middle Ages, but none of them give us a sufficient picture of the domestic manners and sentiments of our forefathers at different periods, a knowledge of which, I need hardly insist, is necessary to enable us to appreciate rightly the motives with which people acted, and the spirit which guided them. The subject, too, must have an interest for many classes of readers, who will be glad to learn something of the manners of former days, if it were only to see the contrast with those of our own time, and to discover in them the origin of many of the characteristics of modern society. Copious and valuable books have been published in our language on the history of costume, on that of domestic architecture, on military antiquities, on the history of religious rites and ceremonies, and on other kindred subjects, which enable the artist to clothe his personages correctly; but these would form, after all, but the disjointed skeleton of a picture, without that further, and perhaps more important, sort of information which is furnished in the following pages, and which will enable him to give life to his composition. I have not attempted to compose a very learned or very elaborate book. The subject is an immensely wide one as regards the materials, during a large portion of the period which I include; and to treat it completely would require the close study of the whole mass of the mediæval literature of Western Europe, edited or inedited, and of the whole mass of the monuments of mediæval art. But my aim has been to bring together a sufficient number of plain facts, in a popular form, to enable the general reader to form a correct view of English manners and sentiments in the middle ages, and I can venture to claim for my book at least the merit of being the result of original research. It is not a compilation from writers who have written on the subject before.

There are at least two ways of arranging a work like this. I might have taken each particular division of the subject, one after the other, and traced it separately through the period of history which this volume embraces; or the whole subject might be divided into historical periods, in each of which all the different phases of social history for that period are included. Each of these plans has its advantages and defects. In the first, the reader would perhaps obtain a clearer notion of the history of any particular division of the subject, as of the history of the table and of diet, or of games and amusements, or the like, but at the same time it would have required a certain effort of comparison and study to arrive at a clear view of the general question at a particular period. The second furnishes this general view, but entails a certain amount of what might almost be called repetition. I have chosen the latter plan, because I think this repetition will be found to be only apparent, and it seems to me the best arrangement for a popular book.

The division of periods, too, is, on the whole, natural, and not arbitrary. During the Anglo-Saxon period, the social system, however developed or modified from time to time, was strictly that of our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and was the undoubted groundwork of our own. The Norman conquest brought in foreign social manners and sentiments totally different from those of the Anglo-Saxons, which for a time predominated, but became gradually incorporated with the Anglo-Saxon manners and spirit, until, towards the end of the twelfth century, they formed the English of the middle ages. The Anglo-Norman period, therefore, may be considered as an age of transition—it may perhaps be described as that of the struggle between the spirit of Anglo-Saxon society and feudalism. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries may be considered in regard to society as the English middle ages—the age of feudalism in its English form—and therefore hold properly the largest space in this volume. The fifteenth century forms again a distinct period in the history of society—it was that of the decline and breaking up of feudalism, the close of the middle ages. At the Reformation, we come to a new transition period—the transition from mediæval to modern society. This, for several reasons, I regard rather as a conclusion, than as an integral part, of the history contained in the following pages, and I therefore give only a light sketch of it, noticing some of its prominent characteristics. The materials, at this late period, become so extensive, and so full of interest, that its history admits of several divisions, each of which is sufficient for an important book, and I leave them to future researches. One period, that of the English Commonwealth, is perhaps of greater interest to us at the present time than any other, because it was that which totally overthrew the traditions of the middle ages, and inaugurated English society as it now exists. I know that the history of society at that period has been studied most profoundly by a friend who is, in all respects, far more capable of treating it than myself, Mr. Hepworth Dixon, and from whom I trust we may look forward to a work on the subject, which will be a most valuable addition to the historical literature of our time. Knowing that he has been working on this interesting subject, I have treated this period very slightly. I should be sorry to let my weeds grow upon his flowers.

A portion of the matter contained in this volume has already appeared in a series of papers in the Art-Journal, but this portion has not only been carefully revised and partly re-written, but so much addition has been made, that I believe that more than half the present volume is entirely new, and the whole may fairly be considered as a new book. I ought to add that one chapter, that on mediæval cookery (chapter xvi.) and the brief notices of the history of the horse in the middle ages, first appeared in papers, contributed by the author to the London Review. It must be stated, too, that the illustrations to my chapter on mediæval minstrelsies were originally engraved for a series of papers on the minstrels, by the Rev. E. L. Cutts, published in the Art-Journal, and that I have to thank that gentleman for the ready willingness with which he has allowed me to use them.

In conclusion, dear Lady Londesborough, I need hardly say that the study of the histories of the people (instead of that of their rulers) has always been a favourite study with me; and that in these researches on mediæval social manners and history, I have always received the warm sympathy and encouragement of the late Lord Londesborough and of your Ladyship. In his Lordship I have lost a respected and valued friend, to whose learned appreciation of the subject of mediæval manners and mediæval art I could always have recourse with trust and satisfaction, with whom I have often conversed on the subjects treated of in the present volume, and whose extensive and invaluable collection of objects of art of the mediæval period, and of that of the renaissance, furnished a never-ending source of information and pleasure. It is therefore with feelings of great personal gratification that I profit by your kind permission to dedicate this volume to your Ladyship.

I have the honour to be, dear Lady Londesborough,
Your Ladyship’s very obedient servant,
THOMAS WRIGHT.

14, Sydney Street, Brompton, London,
November 10, 1861.

CONTENTS.

HISTORY
OF
DOMESTIC MANNERS AND SENTIMENTS.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.—THE ANGLO-SAXONS BEFORE THEIR CONVERSION.—GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF A SAXON HOUSE.

Much has been written at different times on the costume and some other circumstances connected with the condition of our forefathers in past times, but no one has undertaken with much success to treat generally of the domestic manners of the middle ages. The history of domestic manners, indeed, is a subject, the materials of which are exceedingly varied, widely scattered, and not easily brought together; they, of course, vary in character with the periods to which they relate, and at certain periods are much rarer than at others. But the interest of the subject must be felt by every one who appreciates art; for what avails our knowledge of costume unless we know the manners, the mode of living, the houses, the furniture, the utensils, of those whom we have learnt how to clothe? and, without this latter knowledge, history itself can be but imperfectly understood.

In England, as in most other countries of western Europe, at the period of the middle ages when we first become intimately acquainted with them, the manners and customs of their inhabitants were a mixture of those of the barbarian settlers themselves, and of those which they found among the conquered Romans; the latter prevailing to a greater or less extent, according to the peculiar circumstances of the country. This was certainly the case in England among our Saxon forefathers; and it becomes a matter of interest to ascertain what were really the types which belonged to the Saxon race, and to distinguish them from those which they derived from the Roman inhabitants of our island.

We have only one record of the manners of the Saxons before they settled in Britain, and that is neither perfect, nor altogether unaltered—it is the romance of Beowulf, a poem in pure Anglo-Saxon, which contains internal marks of having been composed before the people who spoke that language had quitted their settlements on the Continent. Yet we can hardly peruse it without suspecting that some of its portraitures are descriptive rather of what was seen in England than of what existed in the north of Germany. Thus we might almost imagine that the “street variegated with stones” (stræt wœs stân-fáh), along which the hero Beowulf and his followers proceeded from the shore to the royal residence of Hrothgar, was a picture of a Roman road as found in Britain.

It came into the mind of Hrothgar, we are told, that he would cause to be built a house, “a great mead-hall,” which was to be his chief palace, or metropolis. The hall-gate, we are informed, rose aloft, “high and curved with pinnacles” (heáh and horn-geáp). It is elsewhere described as a “lofty house;” the hall was high; it was “fast within and without, with iron bonds, forged cunningly;” it appears that there were steps to it, and the roof is described as being variegated with gold; the walls were covered with tapestry (web æfter wagum), which also was “variegated with gold,” and presented to the view “many a wondrous sight to every one that looketh upon such.” The walls appear to have been of wood; we are repeatedly told that the roof was carved and lofty; the floor is described as being variegated (probably a tesselated pavement); and the seats were benches arranged round it, with the exception of Hrothgar’s chair or throne. In the vicinity of the hall stood the chambers or bowers, in which there were beds (bed æfter búrum).

These few epithets and allusions, scattered through the poem, give us a tolerable notion of what the house of a Saxon chieftain must have been in the country from whence our ancestors came, as well as afterwards in that where they finally settled. The romantic story is taken up more with imaginary combats with monsters, than with domestic scenes, but it contains a few incidents of private life. The hall of king Hrothgar was visited by a monster named Grendel, who came at night to prey upon its inhabitants; and it was Beowulf’s mission to free them from this nocturnal scourge. By direction of the primeval coast-guards, he and his men proceeded by the “street” already mentioned to the hall of Hrothgar, at the entrance to which they laid aside their armour and left their weapons. Beowulf found the chief and his followers drinking their ale and mead, and made known the object of his journey. “Then,” says the poem, “there was for the sons of the Geats (Beowulf and his followers), altogether, a bench cleared in the beer-hall; there the bold of spirit, free from quarrel, went to sit; the thane observed his office, he that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup; he poured the bright sweet liquor; meanwhile the poet sang serene in Heorot (the name of Hrothgar’s palace), there was joy of heroes.” Thus the company passed their time, listening to the bard, boasting of their exploits, and telling their stories, until Wealtheow, Hrothgar’s queen, entered and “greeted the men in the hall.” She now served the liquor, offering the cup first to her husband, and then to the rest of the guests, after which she seated herself by Hrothgar, and the festivities continued till it was time to retire to bed. Beowulf and his followers were left to sleep in the hall—“the wine-hall, the treasure-house of men, variegated with vessels” (fættum fáhne). Grendel came in the night, and after a dreadful combat received his death-wound from Beowulf. The noise in the hall was great; “a fearful terror fell on the North Danes, on each of those who from the walls heard the outcry.” These were the watchmen stationed on the wall forming the chieftain’s palace, that enclosed the whole mass of buildings (of wealle).

As far as we can judge by the description given in the poem, Hrothgar and his household in their bowers or bed-chambers had heard little of the tumult, but they went early in the morning to the hall to rejoice in Beowulf’s victory. There was great feasting again in the hall that day, and Beowulf and his followers were rewarded with rich gifts. After dinner the minstrel again took up the harp, and sang some of the favourite histories of their tribe. “The lay was sung, the song of the gleeman, the joke rose again, the noise from the benches grew loud, cup-bearers gave the wine from wondrous vessels.” Then the queen, “under a golden crown,” again served the cup to Hrothgar and Beowulf. She afterwards went as before to her seat, and “there was the costliest of feasts, the men drank wine,” until bed-time arrived a second time. While their leader appears to have been accommodated with a chamber, Beowulf’s men again occupied the hall. “They bared the bench-planks; it was spread all over with beds and bolsters; at their heads they set their war-rims, the bright shield-wood; there, on the bench, might easily be seen, above the warrior, his helmet lofty in war, the ringed mail-shirt, and the solid shield; it was their custom ever to be ready for war, both in house and in field.”

Grendel had a mother (it was the primitive form of the legend of the devil and his dam), and this second night she came unexpectedly to avenge her son, and slew one of Hrothgar’s favourite counsellors and nobles, who must therefore have also slept in the hall. Beowulf and his warriors next day went in search of this new marauder, and succeeded in destroying her, after which exploit they returned to their own home laden with rich presents.

These sketches of early manners, slight as they may be, are invaluable to us, in the absence of all other documentary record during several ages, until after the Anglo-Saxons had been converted to Christianity. During this long period we have, however, one source of invaluable information, though of a restricted kind—the barrows or graves of our primeval forefathers, which contain almost every description of article that they used when alive. In that solitary document, the poem of Beowulf, we are told of the arms which the Saxons used, of the dresses in which they were clad; of the rings, and bracelets, and ornaments, of which they were proud; of the “solid cup, the valuable drinking-vessel,” from which they quaffed the mead, or the vases from which they poured it; but we can obtain no notions of the form or character of these articles. From the graves, on the contrary, we obtain a perfect knowledge of the form and design of all these various articles, without deriving any knowledge as to the manner in which they were used. The subject now becomes a more extensive one; and in the Anglo-Saxon barrows in England, we find a mixture, in these articles, of Anglo-Saxon and Roman, which furnishes a remarkable illustration of the mixture of the races. We are all perfectly well acquainted with Roman types; and in the few examples which can be here given of articles found in early Anglo-Saxon barrows, I shall only introduce such as will enable us to judge what classes of the subsequent mediæval types were really derived from pure Saxon or Teutonic originals.

No. 1. Anglo-Saxon Drinking Glasses.

It is curious enough that the poet who composed the romance of Beowulf enumerates among the treasures in the ancient barrow, guarded by the dragon who was finally slain by his hero, “the dear, or precious drinking-cup” (dryncfæt deóre). Drinking-cups are frequently found in the Saxon barrows or graves in England. A group, representing the more usual forms, is given in our cut, [No. 1], found chiefly in barrows in Kent, and preserved in the collections of lord Londesborough and Mr. Rolfe, the latter of which is now in the possession of Mr. Mayer, of Liverpool. The example to the left no doubt represents the “twisted” pattern, so often mentioned in Beowulf, and evidently the favourite ornament among the early Saxons. All these cups are of glass; they are so formed that it is evident they could not stand upright, so that it was necessary to empty them at a draught. This characteristic of the old drinking-cups is said to have given rise to the modern name of tumblers.

No. 2. Germano-Saxon Drinking Glasses.

That these glass drinking-cups—or, if we like to use the term, these glasses—were implements peculiar to the Germanic race to which the Saxons belonged, and not derived from the Romans, we have corroborative evidence in discoveries made on the Continent. I will only take examples from some graves of the same early period, discovered at Selzen, in Rhenish Hesse, an interesting account of which was published at Maintz, in 1848, by the brothers W. and L. Lindenschmit. In these graves several drinking-cups were found, also of glass, and resembling in character the two middle figures in our cut, [No. 1]. Three specimens are given in the cut [No. 2]. In our cut, [No. 5], ([see page 8]), is one of the cup-shaped glasses, also found in these Hessian graves, which closely resembles that given in the cut [No. 1]. None of the cups of the champagne-glass form, like those found in England, occur in these foreign barrows.

No. 3. Anglo-Saxon Pottery.

No. 4. Germano-Saxon Pottery.

We shall find also that the pottery of the later Anglo-Saxon period presented a mixture of forms, partly derived from those which had belonged to the Saxon race in their primitive condition, and partly copied or imitated from those of the Romans. In fact, in our Anglo-Saxon graves we find much purely Roman pottery intermingled with earthen vessels of Saxon manufacture; and this is also the case in Germany. As Roman forms are known to every one, we need only give the pure Saxon types. Our cut, [No. 3], represents five examples, and will give a sufficient notion of their general character. The two to the left were taken, with a large quantity more, of similar character, from a Saxon cemetery at Kingston, near Derby; the vessel in the middle, and the upper one to the right, are from Kent; and the lower one to the right is also from the cemetery at Kingston. Several of these were usually considered as types of ancient British pottery, until their real character was recently demonstrated, and it is corroborated by the discovery of similar pottery in what I will term the Germano-Saxon graves. Four examples from the cemetery at Selzen, are given in the cut [No. 4]. We have here not only the rude-formed vessels with lumps on the side, but also the characteristic ornament of crosses in circles. The next cut, [No. 5], represents two earthen vessels of another description, found in the graves at Selzen. The one to the right is evidently the prototype of our modern pitcher. I am informed there is, in the Museum at Dover, a specimen of pottery of this shape, taken from an Anglo-Saxon barrow in that neighbourhood; and Mr. Roach Smith took fragments of another from an Anglo-Saxon tumulus near the same place. The other variation of the pitcher here given is remarkable, not on account of similar specimens having been found, as far as I know, in graves in England, but because vessels of a similar form are found rather commonly in the Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts. One of these is given in the group [No. 6], which represents three types of the later Anglo-Saxon pottery, selected from a large number copied by Strutt from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The figure to the left, in this group, is a later Saxon form of the pitcher; perhaps the singular form of the handle may have originated in an error of the draughtsman.

Among the numerous articles of all kinds found in the early Anglo-Saxon graves, are bowls of metal (generally bronze or copper), often very thickly gilt, and of elegant forms; they are, perhaps, borrowed from the Romans. Three examples are given in the cut [No. 7], all found in Kent. They were probably intended for the service of the table. Another class of utensils found rather commonly in the Anglo-Saxon barrows are buckets. The first of those represented in our cut, [No. 8], was found in a Saxon barrow near Marlborough, in Wiltshire; the other was found on the Chatham lines. As far as my own experience goes, I believe these buckets are usually found with male skeletons, and from this circumstance, and the fact of their being usually ornamented, I am inclined to think they served some purposes connected with the festivities of the hall; probably they were used to carry the ale or mead. The Anglo-Saxon translation of the Book of Judges (ch. vii. ver. 20), rendered hydrias confregissent by to-bræcon tha bucas, “they broke the buckets.” A common name for this implement, which was properly buc, was æscen, which signified literally a vessel made of ash, the favourite wood of the Anglo-Saxons. Our cut, [No. 9], represents a bucket of wood with very delicately-formed bronze hoops and handle, found in a barrow in Bourne Park, near Canterbury. The wood was entirely decayed; but the hoops and handle are in the collection of lord Londesborough. Such buckets have, also, been found under similar circumstances on the Continent. The close resemblance between the weapons and other instruments found in the English barrows and in those at Selzen, may be illustrated by a comparison of the two axes represented in the cut, [No. 10]. The upper one was found at Selzen; the lower one is in the Museum of Mr. Rolfe, and was obtained from a barrow in the Isle of Thanet. The same similarity is observed between the knives, which is the more remarkable, as the later Anglo-Saxon knives were quite of a different form. The example, cut [No. 11], taken from a grave at Selzen, is the only instance I know of a knife of this early period of Saxon history with the handle preserved; it has been beautifully enamelled. This may be taken as the type of the primitive Anglo-Saxon knife.

Having given these few examples of the general forms of the implements in use among the Saxons before their conversion to Christianity, as much to illustrate their manners as described by Beowulf, as to show what classes of types were originally Saxon, we will proceed to treat of their domestic manners as we learn them from the more numerous and more definite documents of a later period. We shall find it convenient to consider the subject separately as it regards in-door life and out-door life, and it will be proper first that we should form some definite notion of an Anglo-Saxon house.

No. 11. Germano-Saxon Knife.

We can already form some notion of the primeval Saxon mansion from our brief review of the poem of Beowulf; and we shall find that it continued nearly the same down to a late period. The most important part of the building was the hall, on which was bestowed all the ornamentation of which the builders and decorators of that early period were capable. Halls built of stone are alluded to in a religious poem at the beginning of the Exeter book; yet, in the earlier period at least, there can be little doubt that the materials of building were chiefly wood. Around, or near this hall, stood, in separate buildings, the bed-chambers, or bowers (búr), of which the latter name is only now preserved as applied to a summer-house in a garden; but the reader of old English poetry will remember well the common phrase of a bird in bure, a lady in her bower or chamber. These buildings, and the household offices, were all grouped within an inclosure, or outward wall, which, I imagine, was generally of earth, for the Anglo-Saxon word, weall, was applied to an earthen rampart, as well as to masonry. What is termed in the poem of Judith, wealles geát, the gate of the wall, was the entrance through this inclosure or rampart. I am convinced that many of the earth-works, which are often looked upon as ancient camps, are nothing more than the remains of the inclosures of Anglo-Saxon residences.

In Beowulf, the sleeping-rooms of Hrothgar and his court seem to have been so completely detached from the hall, that their inmates did not hear the combat that was going on in the latter building at night. In smaller houses the sleeping-rooms were fewer, or none, until we arrive at the simple room in which the inmates had board and lodging together, with a mere hedge for its inclosure, the prototype of our ordinary cottage and garden. The wall served for a defence against robbers and enemies, while, in times of peace and tranquillity, it was a protection from indiscreet intruders, for the doors of the hall and chambers seem to have been generally left open. Beggars assembled round the door of the wall—the ostium domûs—to wait for alms.

The vocabularies of the Anglo-Saxon period furnish us with the names of most of the parts of the ordinary dwellings. The entrance through the outer wall into the court, the strength of which is alluded to in early writers, was properly the gate (geát). The whole mass inclosed within this wall constituted the burh (burgh), or tun, and the inclosed court itself seems to have been designated as the cafer-tun, or inburh. The wall of the hall, or of the internal buildings in general, was called a wag, or wah, a distinctive word which remained in use till a late period in the English language, and seems to have been lost partly through the similarity of sound.[1] The entrance to the hall, or to the other buildings in the interior, was the duru, or door, which was thus distinguished from the gate. Another kind of door mentioned in the vocabularies was a hlid-gata, literally a gate with a lid or cover, which was perhaps, however, a word merely invented to represent the Latin valva, which is given as its equivalent. The door is described in Beowulf as being “fastened with fire-bands” (fyr-bendum fæst, I. 1448), which must mean iron bars.[2] Either before the door of the hall, or between the door and the interior apartment, was sometimes a selde, literally a shed, but perhaps we might now call it a portico. The different parts of the architectural structure of the hall enumerated in the vocabularies are stapul, a post or log set in the ground; stipere, a pillar; beam, a beam; ræfter, a rafter; læta, a lath; swer, a column. The columns supported bigels, an arch or vault, or fyrst, the interior of the roof, the ceiling. The hrof, or roof, was called also thecen, or thæcen, a word derived from the verb theccan, to cover; but although this is the original of our modern word thatch, our readers must not suppose that the Anglo-Saxon thæcen meant what we call a thatched roof, for we have the Anglo-Saxon word thæc-tigel, a thatch-tile, as well as hrof-tigel, a roof-tile. There was sometimes one story above the ground-floor, for which the vocabularies give the Latin word solarium, the origin of the later mediæval word, soler; but it is evident that this was not common to Anglo-Saxon houses, and the only name for it was up-flor, an upper floor. It was approached by a stæger, so named from the verb stigan, to ascend, and the origin of our modern word stair. There were windows to the hall, which were probably improvements upon the ruder primitive Saxon buildings, for the only Anglo-Saxon words for a window are eag-thyrl, an eye-hole, and eag-duru, an eye-door.

We have unfortunately no special descriptions of Anglo-Saxon houses, but scattered incidents in the Anglo-Saxon historians show us that this general arrangement of the house lasted down to the latest period of their monarchy. Thus, in the year 755, Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, was murdered at Merton by the atheling Cyneard. The circumstances of the story are but imperfectly understood, unless we bear in mind the above description of a house. Cynewulf had gone to Merton privately, to visit a lady there, who seems to have been his mistress, and he only took a small party of his followers with him. Cyneard, having received information of this visit, assembled a body of men, entered the inclosure of the house unperceived (as appears by the context), and surrounded the detached chamber (búr) in which was the king with the lady. The king, taken by surprise, rushed to the door (on tha duru eode), and was there slain fighting. The king’s attendants, although certainly within the inclosure of the house, were out of hearing of this sudden fray (they were probably in the hall), but they were roused by the woman’s screams, rushed to the spot, and fought till, overwhelmed by the numbers of their enemies, they also were all slain. The murderers now took possession of the house, and shut the entrance gate of the wall of inclosure, to protect themselves against the body of the king’s followers who had been left at a distance. These, next day, when they heard what had happened, hastened to the spot, attacked the house, and continued fighting around the gate (ymb thá gatu) until they made their way in, and slew all the men who were there. Again, we are told, in the Ramsey Chronicle published by Gale, of a rich man in the Danish period, who was oppressive to his people, and, therefore, suspicious of them. He accordingly had four watchmen every night, chosen alternately from his household, who kept guard at the outside of his hall, evidently for the purpose of preventing his enemies from being admitted into the inclosure by treachery. He lay in his chamber, or bower. One night, the watchmen having drunk more than usual, were unguarded in their speech, and talked together of a plot into which they had entered against the life of their lord. He, happening to be awake, heard their conversation from his chamber, and defeated their project. We see here the chamber of the lord of the mansion so little substantial in its construction that its inmates could hear what was going on out of doors. At a still later period, a Northumbrian noble, whom Hereward visited in his youth, had a building for wild beasts within his house or inclosure. One day a bear broke loose, and immediately made for the chamber or bower of the lady of the household, in which she had taken shelter with her women, and whither, no doubt, the savage animal was attracted by their cries. We gather from the context that this asylum would not have availed them, had not young Hereward slain the bear before it reached them. In fact, the lady’s chamber was still only a detached room, probably with a very weak door, which was not capable of withstanding any force.

The Harleian Manuscript, No. 603 (in the British Museum), contains several illustrations of Anglo-Saxon domestic architecture, most of which are rather sketchy and indefinite; but there is one picture (fol. 57, v^o.) which illustrates, in a very interesting manner, the distribution of the house. Of this, an exact copy is given in the accompanying cut, [No. 12].[3] The manuscript is, perhaps, as old as the ninth century, and the picture here given illustrates Psalm cxi., in the Vulgate version, the description of the just and righteous chieftain: the beggars are admitted within the inclosure (where the scene is laid), to receive the alms of the lord; and he and his lady are occupied in distributing bread to them, while his servants are bringing out of one of the bowers raiment to clothe the naked. The larger building behind, ending in a sort of round tower with a cupola, is evidently the hall—the stag’s head seems to mark its character. The buildings to the left are chambers or bowers; to the right is the domestic chapel, and the little room attached is perhaps the chamber of the chaplain.

No. 12. Anglo-Saxon Mansion.

It is evidently the intention in this picture to represent the walls of the rooms as being formed, in the lower part, of masonry, with timber walls above, and all the windows are in the timber walls. If we make allowance for want of perspective and proportion in the drawing, it is probable that only a small portion of the elevation was masonry, and that the wooden walls (parietes) were raised above it, as is very commonly the case in old timber-houses still existing. The greater portion of the Saxon houses were certainly of timber; in Alfric’s colloquy, it is the carpenter, or worker in wood (se treo-wyrhta), who builds houses; and the very word to express the operation of building, timbrian, getimbrian, signified literally to construct of timber. We observe in the above representation of a house, that none of the buildings have more than a ground-floor, and this seems to have been a characteristic of the houses of all classes. The Saxon word flór is generally used in the early writers to represent the Latin pavimentum. Thus the “variegated floor” (on fágre flór) of the hall mentioned in Beowulf (l. 1454) was a paved floor, perhaps a tessellated pavement; as the road spoken of in an earlier part of the poem (stræt wæs stán-fáh, the street was stone-variegated, l. 644) describes a paved Roman road. The term upper-floor occurs once or twice, but only I think in translating from foreign Latin writers. The only instance that occurs to my memory of an upper-floor in an Anglo-Saxon house, is the story of Dunstan’s council at Calne in 978, when, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the witan, or council, fell from an upper-floor (of ane úp-floran), while Dunstan himself avoided their fate by supporting himself on a beam (uppon anum beame). The buildings in the above picture are all roofed with tiles of different forms, evidently copied from the older Roman roof-tiles. Perhaps the flatness of these roofs is only to be considered as a proof of the draughtsman’s ignorance of perspective. One of Alfric’s homilies applies the epithet steep to a roof—on tham sticelan hrofe. The hall is not unfrequently described as lofty.

The collective house had various names in Anglo-Saxon. It was called hús, a house, a general term for all residences great or small; it was called heal, or hall, because that was the most important part of the building—we still call gentlemen’s seats halls; it was called ham, as being the residence or home of its possessor; and it was called tún, in regard of its inclosure.

The Anglo-Saxons chose for their country-houses a position which commanded a prospect around, because such sites afforded protection at the same time that they enabled the possessor to overlook his own landed possessions. The Ramsey Chronicle, describing the beautiful situation of the mansion at “Schitlingdonia” (Shitlington), in Bedfordshire, tells us that the surrounding country lay spread out like a panorama from the door of the hall—ubi ab ostio aulæ tota fere villa et late patens ager arabilis oculis subjacet intuentis.

CHAPTER II.
IN-DOOR LIFE AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—THE HALL AND ITS HOSPITALITY.—THE SAXON MEAL.—PROVISIONS AND COOKERY.—AFTER-DINNER OCCUPATIONS.—DRUNKEN BRAWLS.

The introductory observations in the preceding chapter will be sufficient to show that the mode of life, the vessels and utensils, and even the residences of the Anglo-Saxons, were a mixture of those they derived from their own forefathers with those which they borrowed from the Romans, whom they found established in Britain. It is interesting to us to know that we have retained the ordinary forms of pitchers and basins, and, to a certain degree, of drinking vessels, which existed so many centuries ago among our ancestors before they established themselves in this island. The beautiful forms which had been brought from the classic south were not able to supersede national habit. Our modern houses derive more of their form and arrangement from those of our Saxon forefathers than from any other source. We have seen that the original Saxon arrangement of a house was preserved by that people to the last; but it does not follow that they did not sometimes adopt the Roman houses they found standing, although they seem never to have imitated them. I believe Bulwer’s description of the Saxonised Roman house inhabited by Hilda, to be founded in truth. Roman villas, when uncovered at the present day, are sometimes found to have undergone alterations which can only be explained by supposing that they were made when later possessors adapted them to Saxon manners. Such alterations appear to me to be visible in the villa at Hadstock, in Essex, opened by the late lord Braybrooke; in one place the outer wall seems to have been broken through to make a new entrance, and a road of tiles, which was supposed to have been the bottom of a water course, was more probably the paved pathway made by the Saxon possessor. Houses in those times were seldom of long duration; we learn from the domestic anecdotes given in saints’ legends and other writings, that they were very frequently burnt by accidental fires; thus the main part of the house, the timber-work, was destroyed; and as ground was then not valuable, and there was no want of space, it was much easier to build a new house in another spot, and leave the old foundations till they were buried in rubbish and earth, than to clear them away in order to rebuild on the same site. Earth soon accumulated under such circumstances; and this accounts for our finding, even in towns, so much of the remains of the houses of an early period undisturbed at a considerable depth under the present surface of the ground.

It has already been observed that the most important part of the Saxon house was the hall. It was the place where the household (hired) collected round their lord and protector, and where the visitor or stranger was first received,—the scene of hospitality. The householder there held open-house, for the hall was the public apartment, the doors of which were never shut against those who, whether known or unknown, appeared worthy of entrance. The reader of Saxon history will remember the beautiful comparison made by one of king Edwin’s chieftains in the discussion on the reception to be given to the missionary Paulinus. “The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the hall where you sit at your meal in winter, with your chiefs and attendants, warmed by a fire made in the middle of the hall, whilst storms of rain or snow prevail without; the sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is visible is safe from the wintry storm, but after this short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged.” Dining in private was always considered disgraceful, and is mentioned as a blot in a man’s character.

Internally, the walls of the hall were covered with hangings or tapestry, which were called in Anglo-Saxon wah-hrægel, or wah-rift, wall-clothing. These appear sometimes to have been mere plain cloths, but at other times they were richly ornamented, and not unfrequently embroidered with historical subjects. So early as the seventh century, Aldhelm speaks of the hangings or curtains being dyed with purple and other colours, and ornamented with images, and he adds that “if finished of one colour uniform they would not seem beautiful to the eye.” Among the Saxon wills printed by Hickes, we find several bequests of heall wah-riftas, or wall-tapestries for the hall; and it appears that, in some cases, tapestries of a richer and more precious character than those in common use were reserved to be hung up only on extraordinary festivals. There were hooks, or pegs, on the wall, upon which various objects were hung for convenience. In an anecdote told in the contemporary life of Dunstan, he is made to hang his harp against the wall of the room. Arms and armour, more especially, were hung against the wall of the hall. The author of the “Life of Hereward” describes the Saxon insurgents who had taken possession of Ely, as suspending their arms in this manner; and in one of the riddles in the Exeter Book, a war-vest is introduced speaking of itself thus:—

hwilum hongige, Sometimes I hang, hyrstum frœtwed, with ornaments adorned, wlitig on wage, splendid on the wall, þær weras drinceð, where men drink, freolic fyrd-sceorp. a goodly war-vest. —Exeter Book, p. 395.

We have no allusion in Anglo-Saxon writers to chimneys, or fireplaces, in our modern acceptation of the term. When necessary, the fire seems to have been made on the floor, in the place most convenient. We find instances in the early saints’ legends where the hall was burnt by incautiously lighting the fire too near the wall. Hence it seems to have been usually placed in the middle, and there can be little doubt that there was an opening, or, as it was called in later times, a louver, in the roof above, for the escape of the smoke. The historian Bede describes a Northumbrian king, in the middle of the seventh century, as having, on his return from hunting, entered the hall with his attendants, and all standing round the fire to warm themselves. A somewhat similar scene, but in more humble life, is represented in the accompanying cut, taken from a manuscript calendar of the beginning of the eleventh century (MS. Cotton. Julius, A. iv.). The material for feeding the fire is wood, which the man to the left is bringing from a heap, while his companion is administering to the fire with a pair of Saxon tongs (tangan). The vocabularies give tange, tongs, and bylig, bellows; and they speak of col, coal (explained by the Latin carbo), and synder, a cinder (scorium). As all these are Saxon words, and not derived from the Latin, we may suppose that they represent things known to the Anglo-Saxon race from an early period; and as charcoal does not produce scorium, or cinder, it is perhaps not going too far to suppose that the Anglo-Saxons were acquainted with the use of mineral coal. We know nothing of any other fire utensils, except that the Anglo-Saxons used a fyr-scofl, or fire-shovel. The place in which the fire was made was the heorth, or hearth.

No. 13. A Party at the Fire.

The furniture of the hall appears to have been very simple, for it consisted chiefly of benches. These had carpets and cushions; the former are often mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon wills. The Anglo-Saxon poems speak of the hall as being “adorned with treasures,” from which we are perhaps justified in believing that it was customary to display there in some manner or other the richer and more ornamental of the household vessels. Perhaps one end of the hall was raised higher than the rest for the lord of the household, like the dais of later times, as Anglo-Saxon writers speak of the heah-setl, or high seat. The table can hardly be considered as furniture, in the ordinary sense of the word: it was literally, according to its Anglo-Saxon name bord, a board that was brought out for the occasion, and placed upon tressels, and taken away as soon as the meal was ended. Among the inedited Latin ænigmata, or riddles, of the Anglo-Saxon writer Tahtwin, who flourished at the beginning of the eighth century, is one on a table, which is curious enough to be given here, from the manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 12, C. xxiii.). The table, speaking in its own person, says that it is in the habit of feeding people with all sorts of viands; that while so doing it is a quadruped, and is adorned with handsome clothing; that afterwards it is robbed of all it possesses, and when it has been thus robbed it loses its legs:—

DE MENSA.

Multiferis omnes dapibus saturare solesco,
Quadrupedem hinc felix ditem me sanxerit ætas,
Esse tamen pulchris fatim dum vestibus orner,
Certatim me prædones spoliare solescunt,
Raptis nudata exuviis mox membra relinquunt.

In the illuminated manuscripts, wherever dinner scenes are represented, the table is always covered with what is evidently intended for a handsome table-cloth, the myse-hrægel or bord-clath. The grand preparation for dinner was laying the board; and it is from this original character of the table that we derive our ordinary expression of receiving any one “to board and lodging.”

The hall was peculiarly the place for eating—and for drinking. The Anglo-Saxons had three meals in the day,—the breaking of their fast (breakfast), at the third hour of the day, which answered to nine o’clock in the morning, according to our reckoning; the ge-reordung (repast), or nón-mete (noon-meat) or dinner, which is stated to have been held at the canonical hour of noon, or three o’clock in the afternoon; and the æfen-gereord (evening repast), æfen-gyfl (evening food), æfen-mete (evening meat), æfen-thenung (evening refreshment), or supper, the hour of which is uncertain. It is probable, from many circumstances, that the latter was a meal not originally in use among our Saxon forefathers: perhaps their only meal at an earlier period was the dinner, which was always their principal repast; and we may, perhaps, consider noon as midday, and not as meaning the canonical hour.

As I have observed before, the table, from the royal hall down to the most humble of those who could afford it, was not refused to strangers. When they came to the hall-door, the guests were required to leave their arms in the care of a porter or attendant, and then, whether known or not, they took their place at the tables. One of the laws of king Cnut directs, that if, in the meantime, any one took the weapon thus deposited, and did hurt with it, the owner should be compelled to clear himself of suspicion of being cognisant of the use to be made of his arms when he laid them down. History affords us several remarkable instances of the facility of approach even to the tables of kings during the Saxon period. It was this circumstance that led to the murder of king Edmund in 946. On St. Augustin’s day, the king was dining at his manor of Pucklechurch, in Gloucestershire; a bandit named Leofa, whom the king had banished for his crimes, and who had returned without leave from exile, had the effrontery to place himself at the royal table, by the side of one of the principal nobles of the court; the king alone recognised him, rose from his seat to expel him from the hall, and received his death-wound in the struggle. In the eleventh century, when Hereward went in disguise as a spy to the court of a Cornish chieftain, he entered the hall while they were feasting, took his place among the guests, and was but slightly questioned as to who he was and whence he came.

No. 14. An Anglo-Saxon Dinner-Party Pledging.

In the early illuminated manuscripts, dinner scenes are by no means uncommon. The cut, [No. 14] (taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis, MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv., fol. 36, v^o), represents Abraham’s feast on the birth of his child. The guests are sitting at an ordinary long hall table, ladies and gentlemen being mixed together without any apparent special arrangement. This manuscript is probably of the beginning of the eleventh century. The cut, [No. 15], represents another dinner scene, from a manuscript probably of the tenth century (Tiberius, C. vi., fol. 5, v^o), and presents several peculiarities. The party here is a very small one, and they sit at a round table. The attendants seem to be serving them, in a very remarkable manner, with roast meats, which they bring to table on the spits (spitu) as they were roasted. Another festive scene is represented in the cut, [No. 16], taken from a manuscript of the Psychomachia of the poet Prudentius (MS. Cotton. Cleopatra, C. viii., fol. 15, r^o). The table is again a round one, at which Luxury and her companions are seated at supper (seo Galnes æt hyre æfen-ge-reordum sitt).

No. 15. Anglo-Saxons at Dinner.

It will be observed that in these pictures, the tables are tolerably well covered with vessels of different kinds, with the exception of plates. There are one or two dishes of different sizes in [fig. 14], intended, no doubt, for holding bread and other articles; it was probably an utensil borrowed from the Romans, as the Saxon name disc was evidently taken from the Latin discus. It is not easy to identify the forms of vessels given in these pictures with the words which are found in the Anglo-Saxon language, in which the general term for a vessel is fæt, a vat; crocca, a pot or pitcher, no doubt of earthenware, is preserved in the modern English word crockery; and bolla, a bowl, orc, a basin, bledu and mele, each answering to the Latin patera, læfel and ceac, a pitcher or urn, hnæp, a cup (identical in name with the hanap of a later period), flaxe, a flask, are all pure Anglo-Saxon words. Many of the forms represented in the manuscripts are recognised at once as identical with those which are found in the earlier Anglo-Saxon graves. In the vocabularies, the Latin word amphora is translated by crocca, a crock; and lagena by æscen, which means a vessel made of ash wood, and was, in all probability, identical with the small wooden buckets so often found in the early Saxon graves. In a document preserved in Heming’s chartulary of Canterbury, mention is made of “an æscen, which is otherwise called a back-bucket” (æscen the is othre namon hrygilebuc gecleopad, Heming, p. 393), which strongly confirms the opinion I have adopted as to the purpose of the bucket found in the graves.

No. 16. A Supper Party.

The food of the Anglo-Saxons appears to have been in general rather simple in character, although we hear now and then of great feasts, probably consisting more in the quantity of provisions than in any great variety or refinement in gastronomy. Bread formed the staple, which the Anglo-Saxons appear to have eaten in great quantities, with milk, and butter, and cheese. A domestic was termed a man’s hlaf-ætan, or loaf-eater. There is a curious passage in one of Alfric’s homilies, that on the life of St. Benedict, where, speaking of the use of oil in Italy, the Anglo-Saxon writer observes, “they eat oil in that country with their food as we do butter.” Vegetables (wyrtan) formed a considerable portion of the food of our forefathers at this period; beans (beana) are mentioned as articles of food, but I remember no mention of the eating of peas (pisan) in Anglo-Saxon writers. A variety of circumstances show that there was a great consumption of fish, as well as of poultry. Of flesh meat, bacon (spic) was the most abundant, for the extensive oak forests nourished innumerable droves of swine. Much of their other meat was salted, and the place in which the salt meat was kept was called, on account of the great preponderance of the bacon, a spic-hus, or bacon-house; in latter times, for the same reason, named the larder. The practice of eating so much salt meat explains why boiling seems to have been the prevailing mode of cooking it. In the manuscript of Alfric’s translation of Genesis, already mentioned, we have a figure of a boiling vessel ([No. 17]), which is placed over the fire on a tripod. This vessel was called a pan (panna—one Saxon writer mentions isen panna, an iron pan) or a kettle (cytel). It is very curious to observe how many of our trivial expressions at the present day are derived from very ancient customs; thus, for example, we speak of “a kettle of fish,” though what we now term a kettle would hardly serve for this branch of cookery. In another picture ([No. 18]) we have a similar boiling vessel, placed similarly on a tripod, while the cook is using a very singular utensil to stir the contents. Bede speaks of a goose being taken down from a wall to be boiled. It seems probable that in earlier times among the Anglo-Saxons, and perhaps at a later period, in the case of large feasts, the cooking was done out of doors. The only words in the Anglo-Saxon language for cook and kitchen, are cóc and cycene, taken from the Latin coquus and coquina, which seems to show that they only improved their rude manner of living in this respect after they had become acquainted with the Romans. Besides boiled meats, they certainly had roast, or broiled, which they called bræde, meat which had been spread or displayed to the fire. The vocabularies explain the Latin coctus by “boiled or baked” (gesoden, gebacen). They also fried meat, which was then called hyrstyng, and the vessel in which it was fried was called hyrsting-panne, a frying-pan. Broth, also (broth), was much in use.

In the curious colloquy of Alfric (a dialogue made to teach the Anglo-Saxon youth the Latin names for different articles), three professions are mentioned as requisite to furnish the table: first, the salter, who stored the store-rooms (cleafan) and cellars (hedderne), and without whom they could not have butter (butere)—they always used salt butter—or cheese (cyse); next, the baker, without whose handiwork, we are told, every table would seem empty; and lastly, the cook. The work of the latter appears not at this time to have been very elaborate. “If you expel me from your society,” he says, “you will be obliged to eat your vegetables green, and your flesh-meat raw, nor can you have any fat broth.” “We care not,” is the reply, “for we can ourselves cook our provisions, and spread them on the table.” Instead of grounding his defence on the difficulties of his profession, the cook represents that in this case, instead of having anybody to wait upon them, they would be obliged to be their own servants. It may be observed, as indicating the general prevalence of boiling food, that in the above account of the cook, the Latin word coquere is rendered by the Anglo-Saxon seothan, to boil.[4] Our words cook and kitchen are the Anglo-Saxon cóc and cycene, and have no connection with the French cuisine.

We may form some idea of the proportions in the consumption of different kinds of provisions among our Saxon forefathers, by the quantities given on certain occasions to the monasteries. Thus, according to the Saxon Chronicle, the occupier of an estate belonging to the abbey of Medeshamstede (Peterborough) in 852, was to furnish yearly sixty loads of wood for firing, twelve of coal (græfa), six of fagots, two tuns of pure ale, two beasts fit for slaughter, six hundred loaves, and ten measures of Welsh ale.

No. 19. Anglo-Saxons at Table.

It will be observed in the dinner scenes given above, that the guests are helping themselves with their hands. Forks were totally unknown to the Anglo-Saxons for the purpose of carrying the food to the mouth, and it does not appear that every one at table was furnished with a knife. In the cut, [No. 19] (taken from MS. Harl. No. 603, fol. 12, r^o.), a party at table are eating without forks or knives. It will be observed here, as in the other pictures of this kind, that the Anglo-Saxon bread (hlaf) is in the form of round cakes, much like the Roman loaves in the pictures at Pompeii, and not unlike our cross-buns at Easter, which are no doubt derived from our Saxon forefathers. Another party at dinner without knives or forks is represented in the cut [No. 20], taken from the same manuscript (fol. 51, v^o.). The tables here are without table-cloths. The use of the fingers in eating explains to us why it was considered necessary to wash the hands before and after the meal.

No. 20. Anglo-Saxons at Table.

The knife (cnif), as represented in the Saxon illuminations, has a peculiar form, quite different from that of the earlier knife found in the graves, but resembling rather closely the form of the modern razor. Several of these Saxon knives have been found, and one of them, dug up in London, and now in the interesting museum collected by Mr. Roach Smith, is represented in the accompanying cut, [No. 21].[5] The blade, of steel (style), which is the only part preserved, has been inlaid with bronze.

When the repast was concluded, and the hands of the guests washed, the tables appear to have been withdrawn from the hall, and the party commenced drinking. From the earliest times, this was the occupation of the after part of the day, when no warlike expedition or pressing business hindered it. The lord and his chief guests sat at the high seat, while the others sat round on benches. An old chronicler, speaking of a Saxon dinner party, says, “after dinner they went to their cups, to which the English were very much accustomed.”[6] This was the case even with the clergy, as we learn from many of the ecclesiastical laws. In the Ramsey History printed by Gale, we are told of a Saxon bishop who invited a Dane to his house in order to obtain some land from him, and to drive a better bargain, he determined to make him drunk. He therefore pressed him to stay to dinner, and “when they had all eaten enough, the tables were taken away, and they passed the rest of the day, till evening, drinking. He who held the office of cup-bearer, managed that the Dane’s turn at the cup came round oftener than the others, as the bishop had directed him.” We know by the story of Dunstan and king Eadwy, that it was considered a great mark of disrespect to the guests, even in a king, to leave the drinking early after dinner.

No. 21. An Anglo-Saxon Knife.

Our cut, [No. 22], taken from the Anglo-Saxon calendar already mentioned (MS. Cotton. Julius, A. vi.), represents a party sitting at the heah-setl, the high seat, or dais, drinking after dinner. It is the lord of the household and his chief friends, as is shown by their attendant guard of honour. The cup-bearer, who is serving them, has a napkin in his hand. The seat is furnished with cushions, and the three persons seated on it appear to have large napkins or cloths spread over their knees. Similar cloths are evidently represented in our cut [No. 16]. Whether these are the setl-hrœgel, or seat-cloths, mentioned in some of the Anglo-Saxon wills, is uncertain.

No. 22. An Anglo-Saxon Drinking Party.

It will be observed that the greater part of the drinking-cups bear a resemblance in form to those of the more ancient period which we find in Anglo-Saxon graves, and of which some examples have been given in the preceding chapter. We cannot tell whether those seen in the pictures be intended for glass or other material; but it is certain that the Anglo-Saxons were ostentatious of drinking-cups and other vessels made of the precious metals. Sharon Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, has collected together a number of instances of such valuable vessels. In one will, three silver cups are bequeathed; in another, four cups, two of which were of the value of four pounds; in another, four silver cups, a cup with a fringed edge, a wooden cup variegated with gold, a wooden knobbed cup, and two very handsome drinking-cups (smicere scencing-cuppan). Other similar documents mention a golden cup, with a golden dish; a gold cup of immense weight; a dish adorned with gold, and another with Grecian workmanship (probably brought from Byzantium). A lady bequeathed a golden cup weighing four marks and a half. Mention of silver cups, silver basins, &c., is of frequent occurrence. In 833, a king gave his gilt cup, engraved outside with vine-dressers fighting dragons, which he called his cross-bowl, because it had a cross marked within it, and it had four angles projecting, also like a cross. These cups were given frequently as marks of affection and remembrance. The lady Ethelgiva presented to the abbey of Ramsey, among other things, “two silver cups, for the use of the brethren in the refectory, in order that, while drink is served in them to the brethren at their repast, my memory may be more firmly imprinted on their hearts.”[7] It is a curious proof of the value of such vessels, that in the pictures of warlike expeditions, where two or three articles are heaped together as a kind of symbolical representation of the value of the spoils, vessels of the table and drinking-cups and drinking-horns are generally included. Our cut, [No. 23], represents one of these groups (taken from the Cottonian Manuscript, Claudius, C. viii.); it contains a crown, a bracelet or ring, two drinking-horns, a jug, and two other vessels. The drinking-horn was in common use among the Anglo-Saxons. It is seen on the table or in the hands of the drinkers in more than one of our cuts. In the will of one Saxon lady, two buffalo-horns are mentioned; three horns worked with gold and silver are mentioned in one inventory; and we find four horns enumerated among the effects of a monastic house. The Mercian king Witlaf, with somewhat of the sentiment of the lady Ethelgiva, gave to the abbey of Croyland the horn of his table, “that the elder monks may drink from it on festivals, and in their benedictions remember sometimes the soul of the donor.”

No. 23. Articles of Value.

The liquors drunk by the Saxons were chiefly ale and mead; the immense quantity of honey that was then produced in this country, as we learn from Domesday-book and other records, shows us how great must have been the consumption of the latter article. Welsh ale is especially spoken of. Wine was also in use, though it was an expensive article, and was in a great measure restricted to persons above the common rank. According to Alfric’s Colloquy, the merchant brought from foreign countries wine and oil; and when the scholar is asked why he does not drink wine, he says he is not rich enough to buy it, “and wine is not the drink of children or fools, but of elders and wise men.” There were, however, vineyards in England in the times of the Saxons, and wine was made from them; but they were probably rare, and chiefly attached to the monastic establishments. William of Malmesbury speaks of a vineyard attached to his monastery, which was first planted at the beginning of the eleventh century by a Greek monk who settled there, and who spent all his time in cultivating it.

In their drinking, the Anglo-Saxons had various festive ceremonies, one of which is made known to us by the popular story of the lady Rowena and the British king. When the ale or wine was first served, the drinkers pledged each other, with certain phrases of wishing health, not much unlike the mode in which we still take wine with each other at table, or as people of the less refined classes continue to drink the first glass to the health of the company; but among the Saxons the ceremony was accompanied with a kiss. In our cut, [No. 14], the party appear to be pledging each other.

No. 24. Drinking and Minstrelsy.

No. 25. An Anglo-Saxon Fithelere.

The Anglo-Saxon potations were accompanied with various kinds of amusements. One of these was telling stories, and recounting the exploits of themselves or of their friends. Another was singing their national poetry, to which the Saxons were much attached. In the less elevated class, where professed minstrels were not retained, each guest was minstrel in his turn. Cædmon, as his story is related by Bede, became a poet through the emulation thus excited. One of the ecclesiastical canons enacted under king Edgar enjoins “that no priest be a minstrel at the ale (ealu-scóp), nor in any wise act the gleeman (gliwige), with himself or with other men.” In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert in Herefordshire, by the treachery of Offa’s wicked queen (A.D. 792), we are told that the royal party, after dinner, “spent the whole day with music and dancing in great glee.” The cut, [No. 24] (taken from the Harl. MS., No. 603), is a perfect illustration of this incident of Saxon story. The cup-bearer is serving the guest with wine from a vessel which is evidently a Saxon imitation of the Roman amphora; it is perhaps the Anglo-Saxon sester or sæster; a word, no doubt, taken from the Latin sextarius, and carrying with it, in general, the notion of a certain measure. In Saxon translations from the Latin, amphora is often rendered by sester. We have here a choice party of minstrels and gleemen. Two are occupied with the harp, which appears, from a comparison of Beowulf with the later writers, to have been the national instrument. It is not clear from the picture whether the two men are playing both on the same harp, or whether one is merely holding the instrument for the other. Another is perhaps intended to represent the Anglo-Saxon fithelere, playing on the fithele (the modern English words fiddler and fiddle); but his instrument appears rather to be the cittern, which was played with the fingers, not with the bow. Another representation of this performer, from the same manuscript, is given in the cut [No. 25], where the instrument is better defined. The other two minstrels, in [No. 24], are playing on the horn, or on the Saxon pip, or pipe. The two dancers are evidently a man and a woman, and another lady to the extreme right seems preparing to join in the same exercise. We know little of the Anglo-Saxon mode of dancing, but to judge by the words used to express this amusement, hoppan (to hop), saltian and stellan (to leap), and tumbian (to tumble), it must have been accompanied with violent movements. Our cut [No. 26] (from the Cottonian MS., Cleopatra, C. viii. fol. 16, v^o), represents another party of minstrels, one of whom, a female, is dancing, while the other two are playing on a kind of cithara and on the Roman double flute. The Anglo-Saxon names for the different kinds of musicians most frequently spoken of were hearpere, the harper; bymere, the trumpeter; pipere, the player on the pipe or flute; fithelere, the fiddler; and horn-blawere, the horn-blower. The gligman, or gleeman, was the same who, at a later period, was called, in Latin, joculator, and, in French, a jougleur; and another performer, called truth, is interpreted as a stage player, but was probably some performer akin to the gleeman. The harp seems to have stood in the highest rank, or, at least, in the highest popularity, of musical instruments; it was termed poetically the gleó-beam, or the glee-wood.

No. 26. Anglo-Saxon Minstrels.

Although it was considered a very fashionable accomplishment among the Anglo-Saxons to be a good singer of verses and a good player on the harp, yet the professed minstrel, who went about to every sort of joyous assemblage, from the festive hall to the village wake, was a person not esteemed respectable. He was beneath consideration in any other light than as affording amusement, and as such he was admitted everywhere, without examination. It was for this reason that Alfred, and subsequently Athelstan, found such easy access in this garb to the camps of their enemies; and it appears to have been a common disguise for such purposes. The group given in the last cut ([No. 26]) are intended to represent the persons characterised in the text (of Prudentius) by the Latin word ganeones (vagabonds, ribalds), which is there glossed by the Saxon term gleemen (ganeonum, gliwig-manna). Besides music and dancing, they seem to have performed a variety of tricks and jokes, to while away the tediousness of a Saxon afternoon, or excite the coarse mirth of the peasant. That such performers, resembling in many respects the Norman jougleur, were usually employed by Anglo-Saxons of wealth and rank, is evident from various allusions to them. Gaimar has preserved a curious Saxon story of the murder of king Edward by his stepmother (A.D. 978), in which the queen is represented as having in her service a dwarf minstrel, who is employed to draw the young king alone to her house. According to the Anglo-Norman relator of this story, the dwarf was skilled in various modes of dancing and tumbling, characterised by words of which we can hardly now point out the exact distinction, “and could play many other games.”

Wolstanet un naim aveit,
Ki baler e trescher saveit;
Si saveit sailler e tumber,
E altres gius plusurs juer.

In a Saxon manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, C. vi.), among the minstrels attendant on king David (represented in our cut, [No. 27]), we see a gleeman, who is throwing up and catching knives and balls, a common performance of the later Norman jougleurs, as well as of our modern mountebanks. Some of the tricks and gestures of these performers were of the coarsest description, such as could be only tolerated in a rude state of society. An example will be found in a story told by William of Malmesbury of wandering minstrels, whom he had seen performing at a festival at that monastery when he was a child, and which we can hardly venture to give even under the veil of the original Latin. A poem in the Exeter manuscript describes the wandering character of the Saxon minstrels. He tells us:—

swa scriþende Thus roving gesceapum hweorfað with their lays go gleo-men gumena the gleemen of men geond grunda fela, over many lands, þearfe secgað, state their wants, þonc-word sprecaþ, utter words of thank, simle suð oþþe norð always south or north, sumne gemetað they find one gydda gleawne, knowing in songs, geofum unhneawne. who is liberal of gifts. —Exeter Book, p. 326.

No. 27. Anglo-Saxon Minstrels and Gleeman.

We are not to suppose that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers remained at table, merely drinking and listening. On the contrary, the performance of the minstrels appears to have been only introduced at intervals, between which the guests talked, joked, propounded and answered riddles, boasted of their own exploits, disparaged those of others, and, as the liquor took effect, became noisy and quarrelsome. The moral poems often allude to the quarrels and slaughters in which feasts ended. One of these poems, enumerating the various endowments of men, says:— sum bið wrœd tæfle; one is expert at dice; sum bið gewittig one is witty æt win-þege, at wine-bibbing, beor-hyrde god. a good beer-drinker. —Exeter Book, p. 297. A “Monitory Poem,” in the same collection, thus describes the manners of the guests in hall:— þonne monige beoð but many are mæþel-hergendra, lovers of social converse, wlonce wig-smiþas, haughty warriors, win-burgum in, in pleasant cities, sittaþ æt symble they sit at the feast, soð-gied wrecað, tales recount, wordum wrixlað, in words converse, witan fundiað strive to know hwylc æsc-stede who the battle place, inne in ræcede within the house, mid werum wunige; will with men abide; þonne win hweteð then wine wets beornes breost-sefan, the man’s breast-passions, breahtme stigeð suddenly rises cirm on corþre, clamour in the company, cwide-scral letaþ an outcry they send forth missenlice. various. —Exeter Book, p. 314. In a poem on the various fortunes of men, and the different ways in which they come by death, we are told:— sumum meces ecg from one the sword’s edge on meodu-bence, on the mead-bench, yrrum ealo-wosan, angry with ale, ealdor oþþringeð, life shall expel, were win-sadum. a wine-sated man. —Exeter Book, p. 330. And in the metrical legend of St. Juliana, the evil one boasts:— sume ic larum geteah, some I by wiles have drawn, te geflite fremede, to strife prepared, þæt hy færinga that they suddenly eald-afþoncan old grudges edniwedan, have renewed, beore druncne; drunken with beer; ic him byrlade I to them poured wreht of wege, discord from the cup, þæt hi in win-sale so that they in the social hall þurh sweord-gripe through gripe of sword sawle forletan the soul let forth of flæsc-homan. from the body. —Exeter Book, p. 271.

There were other amusements for the long evenings besides those which belonged especially to the hall, for every day was not a feast-day. The hall was then left to the household retainers and their occupations. But we must now leave this part of the domestic establishment. The ladies appear not to have remained at table long after dinner—it was somewhat as in modern times—they proceeded to their own special part of the house—the chamber—and thither it will be my duty to accompany them in the next chapter. I have described all the ordinary scenes that took place in the Anglo-Saxon hall.

CHAPTER III.
THE CHAMBER AND ITS FURNITURE.—BEDS AND BED-ROOMS.—INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—CHARACTER AND MANNERS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON LADIES.—THEIR CRUELTY TO THEIR SERVANTS.—THEIR AMUSEMENTS.—THE GARDEN; LOVE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS FOR FLOWERS.—ANGLO-SAXON PUNISHMENTS.—ALMSGIVING.

The bower or chamber, which, as before stated, was, in the original Saxon mansions, built separate from the hall, was a more private apartment than the latter, although it was still easy of access. In the houses of the rich and the noble there were, as may easily be supposed, several chambers, devoted to the different purposes of the household, and to the reception of visitors. It was in the chamber that the lord of the household transacted his private business, and gave his private audiences. We see by the story of king Edwy that it was considered a mark of effeminacy to retire from the company in the hall after dinner, to seek more quiet amusement in the chamber, where the men rejoined the ladies of the family; yet there are numerous instances which show that, except on festive occasions, this was a very common practice. In some cases, where the party was not an ostentatious or public one, the meal was served in a chamber rather than in the hall. According to the story of Osbert king of Northumberland and Beorn the buzecarl, as told by Gaimar, it was in a chamber that Beorn’s lady received the king, and caused the meal to be served to him which ended in consequences so fatal to the country. We have very little information relating to the domestic games and amusements of the Anglo-Saxons. They seem to have consisted, in a great measure, in music and in telling stories. They had games of hazard, but we are not acquainted with their character. Their chief game was named tæfel or tæfl, which has been explained by dice and by chess; one name of the article played with, tæfl-stan, a table-stone, would suit either interpretation; but another, tæfl-mon, a table-man, would seem to indicate a game resembling our chess.[8] The writers immediately after the conquest speak of the Saxons as playing at chess, and pretend that they learnt the game from the Danes. Gaimar, who gives us an interesting story relating to the deceit practiced upon king Edgar (A.D. 973) by Ethelwold, when sent to visit the beautiful Elfthrida, daughter of Orgar of Devonshire, describes the young lady and her noble father as passing the day at chess.

Orgar jouout à un eschès,
Un giu k’il aprist des Daneis:
Od lui jouout Elstruet la bele.

The Ramsey history, published by Gale, describing a bishop’s visit to court late at night, says that he found the king amusing himself with similar games.[9] An ecclesiastical canon, enacted under king Edgar, enjoined that a priest should not be a tæflere, or gambler.

No. 28. Anglo-Saxon Chairs.

It was not usual, in the middle ages, to possess much furniture, for in those times of insecurity, anything moveable, which could not easily be concealed, was never safe from plunderers. Benches, on which several persons could sit together, and a stool or a chair for a guest of more consideration, were the only seats. Our word chair is Anglo-Norman, and the adoption of the name from that language would seem to indicate that the moveable to which it was applied was unknown to the great mass of the Anglo-Saxon population of the island. The Anglo-Saxon name for it was setl, a seat, or stol; the latter preserved in the modern word stool. We find chairs of different forms in the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, but they are always represented as the seats of persons of high rank and dignity, usually of kings. The two examples given in the accompanying cut ([No. 28]), are taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603, fol. 54, v^o., already referred to in our preceding chapters. It will be observed that, although very simple in form, they are both furnished with cushions. The chair in our cut [No. 29], taken from Alfric’s translation of Genesis (MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv.), on which a king is seated, is of a different and more elegant construction. We sometimes find, in the manuscripts, chairs of fantastic form, which were, perhaps, creations of the artist’s imagination. Such a one is the singular throne on which king David is seated with his harp, in our cut [No. 30], which is also taken from the Harleian Manuscript, No. 603 (fol. 68, v^o.). In addition to the seat, the ladies in the chamber had a scamel, or footstool.

There was a table used in the chamber or bower, which differed altogether from that used in the hall. It was named myse, disc (from the Latin discus), and beod; all words which convey the idea of its being round—beodas (in the plural) was the term applied to the scales of a balance. The Latin phrase, of the 127th Psalm, in circuitu mensæ tuæ, which was evidently understood by the Anglo-Saxon translators as referring to a round table, is translated by one, on ymbhwyrfte mysan thine, and by another, in ymbhwyrfte beodes thines. If we refer back to the preceding chapter, we shall see, in the subjects which appear to exhibit a small domestic party (see cuts [No. 15], [19,], and [24]), that the table is round; and this was evidently the usual form given among the Anglo-Saxons to the table used in the chamber or private room. This form has been preserved as a favourite one in England down to a very recent period, as that of the parlour-table among the class of society most likely to retain Anglo-Saxon tastes and sentiments. In the pictures, the round table is generally represented as supported on three or four legs, though there are instances in which it was represented with one. In the latter case, the board of the table probably turned up on a hinge, as in our old parlour tea-tables; and in the former it was perhaps capable of being taken off the legs; for there is reason for believing that it was only laid out when wanted, and that, when no longer in use, it was put away on one side of the room or in a closet, in the smallest possible compass.

No. 31. A Lamp and Stand.

We have no information to explain to us how the bower or chamber was warmed. In the hall, it is probable that the fire gave warmth and light at the same time, although, in the fragment of the Anglo-Saxon poem relating to the fight at Finnesburg, there is an indistinct intimation that the hall was sometimes lighted with horns, or cressets; but, in the chamber, during the long evenings of winter, it was necessary to have an artificial light to enable its occupants to read, or work, or play. The Anglo-Saxon name for this article, so necessary for domestic comfort, was candel or condel (our candle); and, so general was the application of this term, that it was even used figuratively as we now use the word lamp. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon poets spoke of the sun as rodores candel (the candle of the firmament), woruld-candel (the candle of the world), heofon-condel (the candle of heaven), wyn-condel (the candle of glory). The candle was, no doubt, originally a mere mass of fat plastered round a wick (candel-weoc), and stuck upon an upright stick. Hence the instrument on which it was afterwards supported received the name of candel-sticca or candel-stæf, a candlestick; and the original idea was preserved even when the candle supporter had many branches, it being then called a candel-treow, or candle-tree. The original arrangement of the stick was also preserved; for, down to a very recent period, the candle was not inserted in a socket in the candlestick as at present, but it was stuck upon a spike. The Anglo-Saxon writers speak of candel-snytels, or snuffers. Other names less used, for a candle or some article for giving light, were blacern or blæcern, which is explained in glossaries by the Latin lucerna, and thæcela, the latter signifying merely a light. It was usual, also, among our Saxon forefathers, as among ourselves, to speak of the instrument for illumination as merely leoht, a light—“bring me a light.” A candlestick and candle are represented in one of the cuts in our last chapter (cut [No. 19]). The Anglo-Saxons, no doubt, derived the use of lamps from the Romans; and they were so utterly at a loss for a word to describe this mode of illumination, that they always called it leoht-fæt, a light-vat, or vessel of light. In our cut ([No. 31]) we have an Anglo-Saxon lamp, placed on a candelabrum or stand, exactly in the Roman manner. It will be remembered that Asser, a writer of somewhat doubtful authenticity, ascribes to king Alfred the invention of lanterns, as a protection to the candle, to prevent it from swealing in consequence of the wind entering through the crevices of the apartments—not a very bright picture of the comforts of an Anglo-Saxon chamber. The candles were made of wax as well as tallow. The candlestick was of different materials. In one instance we find it termed, in Anglo-Saxon, a leoht-isern, literally a light-iron: perhaps this was the term used for the lamp-stand, as figured in our last cut. In the inventories we have mention of ge-bonene candel-sticcan (candlesticks of bone), of silver-gilt candlesticks, and of ornamented candlesticks.

No. 32. Anglo-Saxon Beds.

A bed was a usual article of furniture in the bower or chamber; though there were, no doubt, in large mansions, chambers set apart as bedrooms, as well as chambers in which there was no bed, or in which a bed could be made for the occasion. The account given by Gaimar, as quoted above, of the visit of king Osbert to Beorn’s lady, seems to imply that the chamber in which the lady gave the king his meal had a bed in it. The bed itself seems usually to have consisted merely of a sack (sæccing) filled with straw, and laid on a bench or board. Hence words used commonly to signify the bed itself were bænce (a bench), and streow (straw): and even in king Alfred’s translation of Bede, the statement, “he ordered to prepare a bed for him,” is expressed in Anglo-Saxon by, he heht him streowne ge-gearwian, literally, he ordered to prepare straw for him. All, in fact, that had to be done when a bed was wanted, was to take the bed-sack out of the cyst, or chest, fill it with fresh straw, and lay it on the bench. In ordinary houses it is probable that the bench for the bed was placed in a recess at the side of the room, in the manner we still see in Scotland; and hence the bed itself was called, among other names, cota, a cot; cryb, a crib or stall; and clif or clyf, a recess or closet. From the same circumstance a bedroom was called bed-clyfa or bed-cleofa, and bed-cofa, a bed-closet or bed-cove. Our cut ([No. 32]), taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis (Claudius, B. iv.), represents beds of this description. Benches are evidently placed in recesses at the side of the chamber, with the beds laid upon them, and the recesses are separated from the rest of the apartment by a curtain, bed-warft or hryfte. The modern word bedstead means, literally, no more than “a place for a bed;” and it is probable that what we call bedsteads were then rare, and only possessed by people of rank. Two examples are given in the annexed cut ([No. 33]), taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603. Under the head were placed a bolstar and a pyle (pillow), which were probably also stuffed with straw. The clothes with which the sleeper was covered, and which appear in the pictures scanty enough, were scyte, a sheet, bed-felt, a coverlet, which was generally of some thicker material, and bed-reaf, bed-clothes. We know from a multitude of authorities, that it was the general custom of the middle ages to go into bed quite naked. The sketchy character of the Anglo-Saxon drawings renders it difficult sometimes to judge of minute details; but, from the accompanying cuts, it appears that an Anglo-Saxon going into bed, having stripped all his or her clothes off, first wrapped round his body a sheet, and then drew over him the coverlet. Sharon Turner has given a list of the articles connected with the bed, mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon wills and inventories. In the will of a man we find bed-clothes (bed-reafes), with a curtain (hyrfte), and sheet (hopp-scytan), and all that thereto belongs; and he gives to his son the bed-reafe, or bed-cloth, and all its appurtenances. An Anglo-Saxon lady gives to one of her children two chests and their contents, her best bed-curtain, linen, and all the clothes belonging to it. To another child she leaves two chests, and “all the bed-clothes that to one bed belong.” On another occasion we read of pulvinar unum de palleo: not a pillow of straw, as Sharon Turner very erroneously translates it, but a pillow of a sort of rich cloth made in the middle ages. A goat-skin bed-covering was sent to an Anglo-Saxon abbot; and bear-skins are sometimes noticed, as if a part of bed furniture.

No. 33. Anglo-Saxon Beds.

The bed-room, or chamber, and the sitting-room were usually identical; for we must bear in mind that in the domestic manners of the middle ages the same idea of privacy was not connected with the sleeping-room as at the present day. Gaimar has preserved an anecdote of Anglo-Saxon times curiously illustrative of this point. King Edgar—a second David in this respect—married the widow of Ethelwold, whom he had murdered in order to clear his way to her bed. The king and queen were sleeping in their bed, which is described as surrounded by a rich curtain, made of a stuff which we cannot easily explain, when Dunstan, uninvited, but unhindered, entered the chamber to expostulate with them on their wickedness, and came to the king’s bedside, where he stood over them, and entered into conversation— A Londres ert Edgar li reis; King Edgar was at London; En son lit jut e la raine, He lay in his bed with the queen, Entur els out une curtine Round them was a curtain Delgé, d’un paille escariman. Spread, made of scarlet paille. Este-vus l’arcevesque Dunstan Behold archbishop Dunstan Très par matin vint en la chambre Came into the chamber very early in the morning. Sur un pecul de vermail lambre On a bed-post of red plank S’est apué cel arcevesque. The archbishop leaned. In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert by the instrumentality of the queen of king Offa, as it is told by Roger of Wendover, we see the queen ordering to be prepared for the royal guest, a chamber, which was adorned for the occasion with sumptuous furniture, as his bed-room. “Near the king’s bed she caused a seat to be prepared, magnificently decked, and surrounded with curtains; and underneath it the wicked woman caused a deep pit to be dug.” Into this pit the king was precipitated the moment he trusted himself on the treacherous seat. It is clear from the context that the chamber thus prepared for the king was a building apart, and that it had only a ground-floor.

It was in the chamber that the child, while an infant, was brought up by its mother. We have few contemporary notices of the treatment of children at this early age by the Anglo-Saxons, but probably it differed little from the general practice of a later period. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, an Englishman named Walter de Bibblesworth, who wrote, as a great proportion of English writers at that day did, in French verse—French as it was then spoken and written in England—has left us a very curious metrical vocabulary, compiled in French with interlinear explanations of the words in English, which commences with man’s infancy. “As soon as the child is born,” says the author, “it must be swathed; lay it to sleep in its cradle, and you must have a nurse to rock it to sleep.” Kaunt le emfès sera nées,
Lors deyt estre maylolez,
En soun berz l’enfaunt chochet,
De une bercere vus purvoyet,
Où par sa norice seyt bercé.
This was the manner in which the new-born infant was treated in all grades of society. If we turn to one of the more serious romances, we find it practised among princes and feudal chiefs equally as among the poor. Thus, when the princess Parise, wandering in the wild woods, is delivered in the open air, she first wraps her child in a piece of sendal, torn apparently from her rich robe, and then binds, or swathels, it with a white cloth:— La dame le conroie à un pan de cendex,
Puis a pris un blanc drap, si a ses fians bendez.
—Parise la Duchesse, p. 76.
When the robbers carry away the child by night, thinking they had gained some rich booty, they find that they have stolen a newly-born infant, “all swatheled.” Lai troverent l’anffant, trestot anmaloté.
—Ibid. p. 80.
This custom of swatheling children in their infancy, though evidently injurious as well as ridiculous, has prevailed from a very early period, and is still practised in some parts of Europe. We can hardly doubt that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers swatheled their children, although the practice is not very clearly described by any of their writers. We derive the word itself from the Anglo-Saxon language, in which beswethan means to swathe or bind, suethe signifies a band or swathe, and swethel or swæthil, a swaddling-band. These words appear, however, to have been used in a more extensive sense among the Anglo-Saxons than their representatives in more recent times, and as I have not met with them applied in this restricted sense in Anglo-Saxon writers, I should not hastily assume from them that our early Teutonic forefathers did swathe their new-born children. In an Anglo-Saxon poem on the birth of Christ, contained in the Exeter Book (p. 45), the poet speaks of— Bearnes gebyrda, The child’s birth, þa he in binne wæs when he in the bin was in cildes hiw in a child’s form claþum biwunden. with cloths wound round. These words refer clearly to the practice of swaddling; and, though the Anglo-Saxon artist has not here portrayed his object very distinctly, we can hardly doubt that, in our cut ([No. 34]), taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Cædmon, the child, which its mother is represented as holding, is intended to be swathed.

No. 34. Anglo-Saxon Mother and Child.

The word bin, used in the lines of the Anglo-Saxon poem just quoted, which means a hutch or a manger, has reference, of course, to the circumstances of the birth of the Saviour, and is not here employed to signify a cradle. This last word is itself Anglo-Saxon, and has stood its ground in our language successfully against the influence of the Anglo-Norman, in which it was called a bers or bersel, from the latter of which is derived the modern French berçeau. Another name for a cradle was crib; a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 87) speaks of cild geong on crybbe (a young child in a cradle). Our cut [No. 35], also taken from the manuscript of Cædmon, represents an Anglo-Saxon cradle of rather rude construction. The illuminators of a later period often represent the cradle of elegant form and richly ornamented. The Anglo-Saxon child appears here also to be swaddled, but it is still drawn too inaccurately to be decisive on this point. The latter illuminators were more particular and correct in their delineations, and leave no doubt of the universal practice of swaddling infants. A good example is given in our cut [No. 36], taken from an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, of which a copy is given in the large work of the late M. du Sommerard.

No. 35. Anglo-Saxon Child in its Cradle.

There is a very curious paragraph relating to infants in the Pœnitentiale of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, which furnishes us with a singular picture of early Anglo-Saxon domestic life, for Theodore flourished in the latter half of the seventh century. It may be perhaps right to explain that a Pœnitentiale was a code of ecclesiastical laws directing the proportional degrees of penance for each particular class and degree of crimes and offences against public and private morals, and that these laws penetrate to the innermost recesses of domestic life. The Pœnitentiale of archbishop Theodore directs that “if a woman place her infant by the hearth, and the man put water in the cauldron, and it boil over, and the child be scalded to death, the woman must do penance for her negligence, but the man is acquitted of blame.”[10] As this accident must have been of very frequent occurrence to require a particular direction in a code of laws, it implies great negligence in the Anglo-Saxon mothers, and seems to show that, commonly, at least at this early period, they had no cradles for their children, but laid them, swaddled as they were, on the ground close by the fire, no doubt to keep them warm, and that they left them in this situation.

No. 36. Mother and Child.

We are not informed if there were any fixed period during which the infant was kept in swaddling-cloths, but probably when it was thought no longer necessary to keep it in the arms or in the cradle, it was relieved from its bands, and allowed to crawl about the floor and take care of itself. Walter de Bibblesworth, the Anglo-Norman writer of the thirteenth century already quoted, tells us briefly that a child is left to creep about before it has learnt to go on its feet:—

Le enfaunt covent de chatouner
Avaunt ke sache à pées aler.

When the Anglo-Saxon youth, if a boy, had passed his infancy, he entered that age which was called cnithad (knighthood), which lasted from about eight years of age until manhood.

It is very rare that we can catch in history a glimpse of the internal economy of the Anglo-Saxon household. Enough, however, is told to show us that the Saxon woman in every class of society possessed those characteristics which are still considered to be the best traits of the character of Englishwomen; she was the attentive housewife, the tender companion, the comforter and consoler of her husband and family, the virtuous and noble matron. Home was her especial place; for we are told in a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 337) that, “It beseems a damsel to be at her board (table); a rambling woman scatters words, she is often charged with faults, a man thinks of her with contempt, oft her cheek smites.” In all ranks, from the queen to the peasant, we find the lady of the household attending to her domestic duties. In 686, John of Beverley performed a supposed miraculous cure on the lady of a Yorkshire earl; and the man who narrated the miracle to Bede the historian, and who dined with John of Beverley at the earl’s house after the cure, said, “She presented the cup to the bishop (John) and to me, and continued serving us with drink as she had begun, till dinner was over.” Domestic duties of this kind were never considered as degrading, and they were performed with a simplicity peculiarly characteristic of the age. Bede relates another story of a miraculous cure performed on an earl’s wife by St. Cuthbert, in the sequel of which we find the lady going forth from her house to meet her husband’s visitor, holding the reins while he dismounts, and conducting him in. The wicked and ambitious queen Elfthrida, when her step-son king Edward approached her residence, went out in person to attend upon him, and invite him to enter, and, on his refusal, she served him with the cup herself, and it was while stooping to take it that he was treacherously stabbed by one of her attendants. In their chamber, besides spinning and weaving, the ladies were employed in needlework and embroidery, and the Saxon ladies were so skilful in this art, that their work, under the name of English work (opus Anglicum), was celebrated on the continent. We read of a Saxon lady, named Ethelswitha, who retired with her maidens to a house near Ely, where her mother was buried, and employed herself and them in making a rich chasuble for the monks. The four princesses, the sisters of king Ethelstan, were celebrated for their skill in spinning, weaving, and embroidering; William of Malmesbury tells us that their father, king Edward, had educated them “in such wise, that in childhood they gave their whole attention to letters, and afterwards employed themselves in the labours of the distaff and the needle.” The reader will remember in the story of the Saxon queen Osburgha, the mother of the great Alfred, how she sat in her chamber, surrounded by her children, and encouraging them in a taste for literature. The ladies, when thus occupied, were not inaccessible to their friends of either sex. When Dunstan was a youth, he appears to have been always a welcome visitor to the ladies in their “bowers,” on account of his skill in music and in the arts. His contemporary biographer tells us of a noble lady, named Ethelwynn, who, knowing his skill in drawing and designs, obtained his assistance for the ornaments of a handsome stole which she and her women were embroidering. Dunstan is represented as bringing his harp with him into the apartment of the ladies, and hanging it up against the wall, that he might have it ready to play to them in the intervals of their work. Editha, the queen of Edward the Confessor, was well-known as a skilful needle-woman, and as extensively versed in literature. Ingulf’s story of his schoolboy-days, if it be true (for there is considerable doubt of the authenticity of Ingulf’s “History”), and of his interviews with queen Edith, gives us a curious picture of the simplicity of an Anglo-Saxon court, even at the latest period of their monarchy. “I often met her,” he says, “as I came from school, and then she questioned me about my studies and my verses; and willingly passing from grammar to logic, she would catch me in the subtleties of argument. She always gave me two or three pieces of money, which were counted to me by her handmaiden, and then sent me to the royal larder to refresh myself.”

Several circumstances arising out of certain rivalries of social institutions render it somewhat difficult to form an estimate of the moral character of the Anglo-Saxons. In the first place, before the introduction of Christianity, marriage was a mere civil institution, consisted chiefly in a bargain between the father of the lady and the man who sought her, and was completed with few formalities, except those of feasting and rejoicing. After the young lady was out of the control of her parents, the two sexes were on a footing of equality to each other, and the marriage tie was so little binding, that, in case of disagreement, it was at the will of either of the married couple to separate, in which case the relatives or friends of each party interfered, to see that right was done in the proportional repayment of marriage money, dowry, &c., and after the separation each party was at liberty to marry again. This state of things is well illustrated in the Icelandic story of the Burnt Njal, recently translated by Dr. Dasent, and it was not abolished by the secular laws, after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, marriage still continuing to be, in fact, a civil institution. But the higher clergy, at least, who were those who were most strongly inspired with the Romish sentiments, disapproved entirely of this view of the marriage state, and, although the Saxon priests appear not to have hesitated in being present at the second marriages after such separations, they were apparently forbidden by the ecclesiastical laws from giving their blessing to them.[11] With such views of the conjugal relations, we cannot be surprised if the associating together of a man and woman, without the ceremonies of marriage, was looked upon without disgust; in fact, this was the case throughout western Europe during the middle ages, in spite of the doctrines of the church, and the offspring was hardly considered as dispossessed of legal rights. It would be easy to point out examples illustrating this state of things. Again, the priesthood among the unconverted Saxons was probably, as it appears among the Icelanders in the story of the Burnt Njal just alluded to, a sort of family possession,[12] the priests themselves being what we should call family men; so that when the Anglo-Saxon people were Christians, and no longer pagans, the mass of the clergy, whatever may have been their sincerity as Christians, could not understand, or, at least, were unwilling to accept, the new Romish doctrine which required their celibacy. In both these cases, the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical writers, who are our chief authority on this subject, and were the most bigoted of the Romish party, speak in terms of exaggerated virulence, on the score of morality, against practices which the Anglo-Saxon people had not been used to consider as immoral at all. Thus, we should be led to believe, from the accounts of these ecclesiastical moralists, that the Anglo-Saxon clergy were infamous for their incontinence, whereas their declamations probably mean only that the Anglo-Saxon priests persisted in having wives and families. The secular laws contain frequent allusions to the continuance of principles relating to the marriage state, which were derived from the older period of paganism, and some of these are extremely curious. Thus, the laws of king Ethelred provide that a man who seduces another man’s wife, shall make reparation, not only as in modern times, by paying pecuniary damages, but also by procuring him another wife! or, in the words of the original, “If a freeman have been familiar with a freeman’s wife, let him pay for it with his wer-gild (the money compensation for the killing of a man), and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her home to the other.” By a law of king Ine, “if any man buy a wife (that is, if the bargain with her father has been completed), and the marriage take not place,” he was required to pay the money, besides other compensation. And again, by one of Alfred’s laws, it was provided, “If any one deceive an unbetrothed woman, and sleep with her, let him pay for her, and have her afterwards to wife; but if the father of the woman will not give her, let him pay money according to her dowry.” Regulations relating to the buying of a wife, are found in the Anglo-Saxon laws.

We learn nothing in the facts of history to the discredit of the Anglo-Saxon character in general. As in other countries, in the same condition of society, they appear capable of great crimes, and of equally great acts of goodness and virtue. Generally speaking, their least amiable trait was the treatment of their servants or slaves; for this class among the Anglo-Saxons were in a state of absolute servitude, might be bought and sold, and had no protection in the law against their masters and mistresses, who, in fact, had power of life and death over them. We gather from the ecclesiastical canons that, at least in the earlier periods of Anglo-Saxon history, it was not unusual for servants to be scourged to death by or by order of their mistresses. Some of the collections of local miracles, such as those of St. Swithun, at Winchester (of the tenth century), furnish us with horrible pictures of the cruel treatment to which female slaves especially were subjected. For comparatively slight offences they were loaded with gyves and fetters, and subjected to all kinds of tortures. Several of these are curiously illustrative of domestic manners. On one occasion, the maid-servant of Teothic the bell-maker (campanarius), of Winchester, was, for “a slight offence,” placed in iron fetters, and chained up by the feet and hands all night. Next morning she was taken out to be frightfully beaten, and she was put again into her bonds; but in the ensuing night she contrived to make her escape, and fled to the church to seek sanctuary at the tomb of St. Swithun, for being in a state of servitude there was no legal protection for her. On another occasion, a female servant had been stolen from a former master, and had passed into the possession of another master in Winchester. One day her former master came to Winchester, and the girl, hearing of it, went to speak to him. When her mistress heard that she had been seen to talk with a man from a distant province, she ordered her to be thrown into fetters, and treated very cruelly. Next day, while the mistress had gone out on some business, leaving her servant at home in fetters, the latter made her escape similarly to the sanctuary of the church. Another servant-girl in Winchester, taking her master’s clothes to wash in the river, was set upon by thieves, who robbed her of them. Her master, ascribing the mishap to her own negligence, beat her very severely, and then put her in fetters, from which she made her escape like the others. The interesting scene represented in our cut, [No. 37], taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603, fol. 14, v^o., may be regarded as showing us the scourging of a slave. In a picture in Alfric’s version of Genesis, the man scourged, instead of being tied by the feet, is fixed by the body in a cloven post, in a rather singular manner. The aptness with which the Saxon ladies made use of the scourge is illustrated by one of William of Malmesbury’s anecdotes, who tells us that, when king Ethelred was a child, he once so irritated his mother, that not having a whip, she beat him with some candles, which were the first thing that fell under her hand, until he was almost insensible. “On this account he dreaded candles during the rest of his life, to such a degree that he would never suffer the light of them to be introduced in his presence!”

No. 37. Washing and Scourging.

No. 38. Hanging.

The cruelty of the Anglo-Saxon ladies to their servants offers a contrast to the generally mild character of the punishments inflicted by the Anglo-Saxon laws. The laws of Ethelred contain the following injunction, showing how contrary capital punishment is to the spirit of Anglo-Saxon legislation:—“And the ordinance of our lord, and of his witan (parliament), is, that Christian men for all too little be not condemned to death; but in general let mild punishment be decreed, for the people’s need; and let not for a little God’s handywork and his own purchase be destroyed, which he dearly bought.” This injunction is repeated in the laws of Canute. It appears that the usual method of inflicting death upon criminals was by hanging. Our cut, [No. 38], taken from the illuminations to Alfric’s version of Genesis, represents an Anglo-Saxon gallows (galga), and the rather primitive method of carrying the last penalty of the law into effect. The early illuminated manuscripts give us few representations of popular punishments. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies enumerate the following implements of punishment, besides the galga, or gallows: fetters (fæter, cops), distinguished into foot-fetters and hand-fetters; shackles (scacul, or sceacul), which appear to have been used specially for the neck; a swipa, or scourge; ostig gyrd, a knotted rod; tindig, explained by the Latin scorpio, and meaning apparently a whip with knots or plummets at the end of thongs, like those used by the charioteers in the cuts in our next chapter; and an instrument of torture called a threpel, which is explained by the Latin equuleus. The following cut, [No. 39], from the Harleian MS., No. 603 (so often quoted), shows us the stocks, generally placed by the side of the public road at the entrance to the town. Two other offenders are attached to the columns of the public building, perhaps a court-house, by apparently a rope and a chain. The Anglo-Saxon laws prescribe few corporal punishments, but substitute for them the payment of fines, or compensation-money, and these are proportioned to the offences with very extraordinary minuteness. Thus, to select a few examples from the very numerous list of injuries which may be done to a man’s person,—if any one struck off an ear, he was to pay twelve shillings, and, if an eye, fifty shillings; if the nose were cut through, the payment was nine shillings. “For each of the four front teeth, six shillings; for the tooth which stands next to them, four shillings; for that which follows, three shillings; and for all the others, a shilling each.” If a thumb were struck off, it was valued at twenty shillings. “If the shooting finger were struck off” (a term which shows how incorrectly it has been assumed that the Anglo-Saxons were not accustomed to the bow), the compensation was eight shillings; for the middle finger, four shillings; for the ring-finger, six shillings; and for the little finger eleven shillings. The thumb-nail was valued at three shillings; and the finger-nails at one shilling each.

No. 39. Anglo-Saxon Punishments.

We have little information on the secrets of the toilette of the Anglo-Saxons. We know from many sources that washing and bathing were frequent practices among them. The use of hot baths they probably derived from the Romans. The vocabularies give thermæ as the Latin equivalent. They are not unfrequently mentioned in the ecclesiastical laws, and in the canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, warm baths and soft beds are proscribed as domestic luxuries which tended to effeminacy. If these were really the thermæ of the Romans, it is perhaps the hostility of the ascetic part of the Romish clergy which caused them to be discontinued and forgotten. Our cut [No. 37] represents a party at their ablutions. We constantly find among the articles in the graves of Anglo-Saxon ladies tweezers, which were evidently intended for eradicating superfluous hairs, a circumstance which contributes to show that they paid special attention to hair-dressing. To judge from the colour of the hair in some of the illuminations, we might be led to suppose that sometimes they stained it. The young men seem to have been more foppish and vain of their persons than the ladies, and some of the old chronicles, such as the Ely history, tell us (which we should hardly have expected) that this was especially a characteristic of the Danish invaders, who, we are told, “following the custom of their country, used to comb their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, often changed their clothes, and used many other such frivolous means of setting off the beauty of their persons.”[13]

There is every reason for believing that the Anglo-Saxon ladies were fond of gardens and flowers, and many allusions in the writings of that period intimate a warm appreciation of the beauties of nature. The poets not unfrequently take their comparisons from flowers. Thus, in a poem in the Exeter Book, a pleasant smell is described as being— Swecca swetast, Of odours sweetest, swylce on sumeres tid such as in summer’s tide stincað on stowum, fragrance send forth in places, staþelum fæste, fast in their stations, wynnum æfter wongum, joyously o’er the plains, wyrta geblowene blown plants hunig-flowende. honey-flowing. —Exeter Book, p. 178. And one of the poetical riddles in the same collection contains the lines— Ic eom on stence I am in odour strengre þonne ricels, stronger than incense, oþþe rosa sy, or the rose is, on eorþan tyrf which on earth’s turf wynlic weaxeð; pleasant grows; ic eom wræstre þonne heo. I am more delicate than it. þeah þa lilie sy though that the lily be leof mon-cynne, dear to mankind, beorht on blostman, bright in blossom, ic eom betre þonne heo. I am better than it. —Exeter Book, p. 423. So in another of these poems we read—

Fæger fugla reord, Sweet was the song of birds, folde geblowen, the earth was covered with flowers, geacas gear budon. cuckoos announced the year. —Ibid. p. 146.

Before we quit entirely the Saxon hall, and its festivities and ceremonies, we must mention one circumstance connected with them. The laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxons earnestly enjoined the duty of almsgiving, and a multitude of persons partook of the hospitality of the rich man’s mansion, who were not worthy to be admitted to his tables. These assembled at meal-times outside the gate of his house, and it was a custom to lay aside a portion of the provisions to be distributed among them, with the fragments from the table. In Alfric’s homily for the second Sunday after Pentecost, the preacher, after dwelling on the story of Lazarus, who was spurned from the rich man’s table, appeals to his Anglo-Saxon audience—“many Lazaruses ye have now lying at your gates, begging for your superfluity.” Bede tells us of the good king Oswald, that when he was once sitting at dinner, on Easter-day, with his bishop, having a silver dish full of dainties before him, as they were just ready to bless the bread, the servant whose duty it was to relieve the poor, came in on a sudden and told the king that a great multitude of needy persons from all parts were sitting in the streets begging some alms of the king. The latter immediately ordered the provisions set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish to be cut in pieces and divided among them. In the picture of a Saxon house given in our first chapter (p. 15), we see the lord of the household on a sort of throne at the entrance to his hall, presiding over the distribution of his charity. This seat, generally under an arch or canopy, is often represented in the Saxon manuscripts, and the chief or lord seated under it, distributing justice or charity. In the accompanying cut, [No. 40], taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius, the lady Wisdom is represented seated on such a throne. It was, perhaps, the burh-geat-setl, or seat at the burh-gate, mentioned as characteristic of the rank of the thane in the following extract from a treatise on ranks in society, printed with the Anglo-Saxon laws: “And if a ceorl thrived, so that he had fully five hides of his own land, church (or perhaps private chapel), and kitchen (kycenan), bell-house, and burh-gate-seat, and special duty in the king’s hall, then was he thenceforth worthy of the dignity of thane.”

No. 40. Wisdom on her Throne.

CHAPTER IV.
OUT OF DOOR AMUSEMENTS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—HUNTING AND HAWKING.—HORSES AND CARRIAGES.—TRAVELLING.—MONEY-DEALINGS.

The progress of society from its first formation to the full development of civilization, has been compared not inaptly to the life of man. In the childhood and youth of society, when the population was not numerous, and a servile class performed the chief part of the labour necessary for administering to the wants or luxuries of life, people had a far greater proportion of time on their hands to fill up with amusements than at a later period, and many that are now considered frivolous, or are only indulged in at rare intervals of relaxation, then formed the principal occupations of men’s lives. We have glanced at the in-door amusements of the Anglo-Saxons in a previous chapter; but their out-door recreations, although we have little information respecting them, were certainly much more numerous. The multitude of followers who, in Saxon times, attended on each lord or rich man as their military chief, or as their domestic supporter, had generally no serious occupation during the greater part of the day; and this abundance of unemployed time was not confined to one class of society, for the artisan had to work less to gain his subsistence, and both citizen and peasant were excused from work altogether during the numerous holidays of the year.

That the Anglo-Saxons were universally fond of play (plega) is proved by the frequent use of the word in a metaphorical sense. They even applied it to fighting and battle, which, in the language of the poets, were plega-gares (play of darts), æsc-plega (play of shields), and hand-plega (play of hands).[14] In the glossaries, plegere (a player), and plega-man (a playman), are used to represent the Roman gladiator; and plega-hús (a playhouse), and plega-stow (a play-place), express a theatre, or more probably an amphitheatre. Recent discoveries have shown that there was a theatre of considerable dimensions in the Roman town of Verulamium (near St. Alban’s); and old writers tell us there was one at the Silurian Isca (Caerleon), though these buildings were doubtless of rare occurrence; but every Roman town of any importance in the island had its amphitheatre outside the walls for gladiatorial and other exhibitions. The result of modern researches seems to prove that most of the Roman towns continued to exist after the Saxon settlement of the island, and we can have no doubt that the amphitheatres, at least for awhile, continued to be devoted to their original purposes, although the performances were modified in character. Some of them (like that at Richborough, in Kent, lately examined), were certainly surrounded by walls, while others probably were merely cut in the ground, and surrounded by a low embankment formed of the material thrown out. The first of these, the Saxons would naturally call a play-house, while the other would receive the no less appropriate appellation of a play-stow, or place for playing. Among the illustrations of the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl., No. 603), to which we have so often had occasion to refer, there is a very curious picture, evidently intended to represent an amphitheatre outside a town. It is copied in our cut [No. 41]. The rude Anglo-Saxon draughtsman has evidently intended to represent an embankment, occupied by the spectators, around the spot where the performances take place. The spectator to the left is expressing his approbation by clapping with his hands. The performances themselves are singular: we have a party of minstrels, one of them playing on the Roman double pipes, so often represented in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, while another is dancing to him, and the third is performing with a tame bear, which is at the moment of the representation simulating sleep. Games of this kind with animals, succeeded no doubt among the Saxons to the Roman gladiatorial fights, but few have imagined that the popular English exhibition of the dancing bear dated from so remote a period. The manuscripts show that the double pipe was in use among the Anglo-Saxons; with a little modification, and a bag or bellows to supply the place of the human lungs, this instrument was transformed into a bagpipe.

No. 41. Games of the Amphitheatre.

Not the least curious part of this picture is the town in the background, with its entrance gateway, and public buildings. The Anglo-Saxon draughtsmen were imperfectly acquainted with perspective, and paid little attention to proportion in their representations of towns and houses, a circumstance which is fully illustrated in this picture. As the artist was unable from this circumstance to represent the buildings and streets of a town in their relative position, he put in a house to represent a multitude of houses, and here he has similarly given one building within the walls to represent all the public buildings of the town. An exactly similar characteristic will be observed in our cut [No. 42], taken from the same manuscript, where one temple represents the town. Here again we have a party of citizens outside the walls, amusing themselves as well as they can; some, for want of other employment, are laying themselves down listlessly on the ground.

No. 42. A Town.

The national sentiments and customs of the Anglo-Saxons would, however, lead to the selection of other places for the scenes of their games, and thus the Roman amphitheatres became neglected. Each village had its arena—its play-place—where persons of all ages and sexes assembled on their holidays to be players or lookers on; and this appears to have been usually chosen near a fountain, or some object hallowed by the popular creed, for customs of this kind were generally associated with religious feelings which tended to consecrate and protect them. These holiday games, which appear to have been very common among our Saxon forefathers, were the originals of our village wakes. Wandering minstrels, like those represented in our cut [No. 41], repaired to them to exhibit their skill, and were always welcome. The young men exerted themselves in running, or leaping, or wrestling. These games attracted merchants, and gradually became the centres of extensive fairs. Such was the case with one of the most celebrated in England during the middle ages, that of Barnwell, near Cambridge. It was a large open place, between the town and the banks of the river, well suited for such festivities as those of which we are speaking. A spring in the middle of this plain, we are told in the early chartulary of Barnwell Abbey, was called Beornawyl (the well of the youths), because every year, on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the boys and youths of the neighbourhood assembled there, and, “after the manners of the English, practised wrestling and other boyish games, and mutually applauded one another with songs and musical instruments; whence, on account of the multitude of boys and girls who gathered together there, it grew a custom for a crowd of sellers and buyers to assemble there on the same day for the purpose of commerce.”[15] This is a curious and a rather rare allusion to an Anglo-Saxon wake.

One of the great recreations of the Anglo-Saxons was hunting, for which the immense forests, which then covered a great portion of this island, gave a wide scope. The most austere and pious, as well as the most warlike, of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, were passionately attached to the pleasures of the chase. According to the writer who has assumed the name of Asser, the great Alfred was so attached to this amusement, that he condescended to teach his “falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers” himself. His grandson, king Ethelstan, as we learn from William of Malmesbury, exacted from the Welsh princes, among other articles of tribute, “as many dogs as he might choose, which, from their sagacious scent, could discover the retreats and hiding-places of wild beasts; and birds trained to make prey of others in the air.” The same writer tells us of the sainted Edward the Confessor, that “there was one earthly enjoyment in which he chiefly delighted, which was, hunting with fleet hounds, whose opening in the woods he used with pleasure to encourage; and again, with the pouncing of birds, whose nature it is to prey on their kindred species. In these exercises, after hearing divine service in the morning, he employed himself whole days.” It is evident from the ecclesiastical laws, that it was difficult to restrain even the clergy from this diversion. One of the ecclesiastical canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, enjoins “that no priest be a hunter, or fowler, or player at tables, but let him play on his books, as becometh his calling.” When the king hunted, it appears that men were employed to beat up the game, while others were placed at different avenues of the forest to hinder the deer from taking a direction contrary to the wishes of the hunter. Several provisions relating to the employment of men in this way, occur in the Domesday survey. A contemporary writer of the Life of Dunstan gives the following description of the hunting of king Edmund the Elder, at Ceoddri (Chedder). “When they reached the forest,” he says, “they took various directions along the woody avenues, and the varied noise of the horns, and the barking of the dogs, aroused many stags. From these, the king with his pack of hounds chose one for his own hunting, and pursued it long, through devious ways with great agility on his horse, with the hounds following. In the vicinity of Ceoddri were several steep and lofty precipices hanging over deep declivities. To one of these the stag came in his flight, and dashed headlong to his destruction down the immense depth, all the dogs following and perishing with him.” The king with difficulty held in his horse.

No. 43. Anglo-Saxon Dogs.

The dogs (hundas), used for the chase among the Anglo-Saxons, were valuable, and were bred with great care. Every noble or great landowner had his hund-wealh, or dog-keeper. The accompanying cut ([No. 43]), taken from the Harleian MS. No. 603, represents a dog-keeper, with his couple of hounds—they seem to have hunted in couples. The Anglo-Saxon name for a hunting-dog was ren-hund, a dog of chase, which is interpreted by greyhound; and this appears, from the cut, to have been the favourite dog of our Saxon forefathers. It appears by an allusion given above, that the Saxons obtained hunting dogs from Wales; yet the antiquary will be at once struck with the total dissimilarity of the dogs pictured in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, from the British dogs represented on the Romano-British pottery. The dogs were used to find the game, and follow it by the scent; the hunters killed it with spears, or with bows and arrows, or drove it into nets. In the Colloquy of Alfric, a hunter (hunta) of one of the royal forests gives a curious account of his profession. When asked how he practises his “craft,” he replies, “I braid nets, and set them in a convenient place, and set on my hounds, that they may pursue the beasts of chase, until they come unexpectedly to the nets, and so become intangled in them, and I slay them in the nets.” He is then asked if he cannot hunt without nets, to which he replies, “Yes, I pursue the wild animals with swift hounds.” He next enumerates the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter usually hunted—“I take harts, and boars, and deer, and roes, and sometimes hares.” “Yesterday,” he continues, “I took two harts and a boar, ... the harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon.” “How were you so hardy as to slay a boar?” “My hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, suddenly struck him down.” “You were very bold then.” “A hunter must not be timid, for various wild beasts dwell in the woods.” It would seem by this, that boar-hunting was not uncommon in the more extensive forests of this island; but Sharon Turner has made a singular mistake, in supposing, from a picture in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, that boar-hunting was the ordinary occupation of the month of September. The scene which he has thus mistaken—or at least, a portion of it—is given in our cut [No. 44] (from the Cottonian MS. Claudius, C. viii.); it represents swineherds driving their swine into the forests to feed upon acorns, which one of the herdsmen is shaking from the trees with his hand. The herdsmen were necessarily armed to protect the herds under their charge from robbers.

No. 44. Swine-Herds.

The Anglo-Saxons, as we have seen, were no less attached to hawking than hunting. The same Colloquy already quoted contains the following dialogue relating to the fowler (fugelere). To the question, “How dost thou catch birds?” he replies, “I catch them in many ways; sometimes with nets, sometimes with snares, sometimes with bird-lime, sometimes with whistling, sometimes with a hawk, sometimes with a trap.” “Hast thou a hawk?” “I have.” “Canst thou tame them?” “Yes, I can; of what use would they be to me unless I could tame them?” “Give me a hawk.” “I will give one willingly in exchange for a swift hound. What kind of hawk will you have, the greater or the lesser?”... “How feedest thou thy hawks?” “They feed themselves and me in winter, and in spring I let them fly to the wood, and I catch young ones in autumn and tame them.” A party of hawkers is represented in our cut [No. 45], taken from the manuscript last quoted, where it illustrates the month of October. The rude attempt at depicting a landscape is intended to represent a river running from the distant hills into a lake, and the hawkers are hunting cranes and other water-fowl. Presents of hawks and falcons are not unfrequently mentioned in Anglo-Saxon writers; and in a will, an Anglo-Saxon leaves to his natural lord “two hawks and all his stag-hounds.”

No. 45. Anglo-Saxons Hawking.

No. 46. Anglo-Saxons on a Journey.

The Saxon youths were proud of their skill in horsemanship. Bede relates an anecdote of the youthful days of Herebald, abbot of Tynemouth, when he attended upon bishop John of Beverley, from Herebald’s own words—“It happened one day,” the latter said, “that as we were travelling with him (the bishop), we came into a plain and open road, well adapted for galloping our horses. The young men that were with him, and particularly those of the laity, began to entreat the bishop to give them leave to gallop, and make trial of the goodness of their horses.... When they had several times galloped backwards and forwards, the bishop and I looking on, my wanton humour prevailed, and I could no longer refrain; but, though he forbade me, I struck in among them, and began to ride at full speed.” Horses were used chiefly by the upper classes of society in travelling. Two of a party of Saxon travellers are represented in our cut [No. 46] (from MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv.). The lady, it will be observed, rides sideways, as in modern times, and the illuminated manuscripts of different periods furnish us with examples enough to show that such was always the practice; yet an old writer has ascribed the introduction of side-saddles into this country to Anne of Bohemia, the queen of Richard II., and the statement has been repeated by writers on costume, who too often blindly compile from one another without examining carefully the original sources of information.[16] The next cut, [No. 47] (taken from MS. Harl. No. 603), represents a horseman with his arms, the spear, and the round shield, with its boss, which reminds us of those frequently found in the early Anglo-Saxon graves. The horse furniture is tolerably well defined in these figures. The forms of the spur (spura) and the stirrup (called in Anglo-Saxon stirap and hlypa) are very peculiar. Most of the furniture of the horse was then, as now, of leather, and was made by the shoemaker (se sceowyrhta), who seems to have been the general manufacturer of articles in this material. Alfric’s Colloquy enumerates among the articles made by the shoemaker, bridle-thongs (bridel-thwancgas), harnesses (gerœda), spur-leathers (spur-lethera), and halters (hælfra). The form of the saddle is shown in the representation of a horse without a rider, given, from the manuscript last quoted, in our cut [No. 48].

No. 49. A Chariot.

In the Anglo-Saxon church histories, we meet with frequent instances of persons, who were unable to walk from sickness or other cause, being carried in carts or cars, but in most cases these seem to have been nothing but the common agricultural carts adapted temporarily to this usage. A horse-litter is on one occasion used for the same purpose. It is certain, however, that the Anglo-Saxons had chariots for travelling. The usual names of all vehicles of this kind were wægn or wæn (from which, our waggon) and crat or cræt (which appears to be the origin of the English word cart). These two terms appear to have been used synonymously, for the words of the 18th Psalm, hi in curribus, are translated in one Anglo-Saxon version by on wænum, and in another by in crætum. The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts give us various representations of vehicles for travelling. The one represented in the cut [No. 49] is taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius. It seems to have been a barbaric “improvement” upon the Roman biga, and is not much unlike our modern market-carts. The whip used by the lady who is driving so furiously, is of the same form as that used by the horsewoman in our cut No. 46. The artist has not shown the wægne-thixl, or shaft. A four-wheeled carriage, of rather a singular construction, is found often repeated, with some variations, in the illuminations of the manuscript of Alfric’s translation of the Pentateuch. One of them is given in our cut [No. 50]. It is quite evident that a good deal of the minor detail of construction has been omitted by the draughtsman. Anglo-Saxon glosses give the word rad to represent the Latin quadriga. From the same source we learn that the compound word wæn-fær, waggon-going, was used to express journeying in chariots.

No. 50. An Anglo-Saxon Carriage.

Riding in chariots must have been rare among the Anglo-Saxons. Horses were only used by the better classes of society; and we learn from Bede and other writers that pious ecclesiastics, such as bishops Aidan, Ceadda, and Cuthbert, thought it more consistent with the humility of their sacred character to journey on foot. The pedestrian carried either a spear or a staff; the rider had almost always a spear. It is noted of Cuthbert, in Bede’s life of that saint, that one day when he came to Mailros (Melrose), and would enter the church to pray, having leaped from his horse, he “gave the latter and his travelling spear to the care of a servant, for he had not yet resigned the dress and habits of a layman.” The weapon was, no doubt, necessary for personal safety. There is a very curious clause in the Anglo-Saxon laws of king Alfred, relating to an accident arising from the carrying the spear, which we can hardly understand, although to require a special law it must have been of frequent occurrence; this law provides that “if a man have a spear over his shoulder, and any man stake himself upon it,” the carrier of the spear incurred severe punishment, “if the point be three fingers higher than the hindmost part of the shaft.” He was not considered blameable if he held the spear quite horizontally.

The traveller always wore a covering for his head, which, though of various shapes, none of which resembled our modern hat, was characterised by the general term of hæt. He seems to have been further protected against the inclemency of the weather by a cloak or mantle (mentel). One would be led to suppose that this outer garment was more varied in form and material than any other part of the dress, from the great number of names which we find applied to it, such as basing, hæcce, hæcela, or hacela, pæll, pylca, scyccels, wæfels, &c. The writings which remain throw no light upon the provisions made by travellers against rain; for the dictionary-makers who give scúr-scead (shower-shade) as signifying an umbrella, are certainly mistaken.[17] Yet that umbrellas were known to the Anglo-Saxons is proved beyond a doubt by a figure in the Harleian manuscript, No. 603, which is given in our cut [No. 51]. A servant or attendant is holding an umbrella over the head of a man who appears to be covered at the same time with the cloak or mantle.

No. 51. An Anglo-Saxon Umbrella.

Travelling to any distance must have been rendered more uncomfortable, especially when passing through wild districts where there were no inns. The word inn is itself Saxon, and signified a lodging, but it appears to have been more usually applied to houses of this kind in towns. A tavern was also called a gest-hus or gest-bur, a house or chamber for guests, and cumena-hus, a house of comers. Guest-houses, like caravanserais in the East, appear to have been established in different parts of Saxon England, near the high roads, for the reception of travellers. A traveller in Bede arrives at a hospitium in the north of England, which was kept by a paterfamilias (or father of a family) and his household. In the Northumbrian gloss on the Psalms, printed by the Surtees Society, the Latin words of Psalm liv., in hospitiis eorum, are rendered by in gest-husum heara. This shows that Bede’s hospitium was really a guest-house: these guest-houses were kept up in various parts of England until Norman times; and Walter Mapes, in his treatise de Nugis Curialium, has preserved a story relating to one of William the Conqueror’s Saxon opponents, Edric the Wild, which tells how, returning from hunting in the forest of Dean, and accompanied only with a page, he came to a large house, “like the drinking houses of which the English have one in every parish, called in English gild-houses,” perhaps an error for guest-houses (quales Anglici in singulis singulas habebant diocesibus bibitorias, ghildhus Anglice dictas). It seems not improbable, also, that the ruins of Roman villas and small stations, which stood by the sides of roads, were often roughly repaired or modified, so as to furnish a temporary shelter for travellers who carried provisions, &c., with them, and could therefore lodge themselves without depending upon the assistance of others. A shelter of this kind—from its consisting of bare walls, a mere shelter against the inclemency of the storm—might be termed a ceald-hereberga (cold harbour), and this would account for the great number of places in different parts of England, which bear this name, and which are almost always on Roman sites and near old roads. The explanation is supported by the circumstance that the name is found among the Teutonic nations on the continent—the German Kalten-herberg—borne by some inns at the present day.

The deficiency of such comforts for travellers in Anglo-Saxon times was compensated by the extensive practice of hospitality, a virtue which was effectually inculcated by the customs of the people as well as by the civil and ecclesiastical laws. When a stranger presented himself at a Saxon door, and asked for board and lodging, the man who refused them was looked upon with contempt by his countrymen. In the seventh century, as we learn from the Pœnitentiale of archbishop Theodore, the refusal to give lodging to a stranger (quicunque hospitem non receperit in domum suam) was considered worthy of ecclesiastical censure. And in the Ecclesiastical Institutes, drawn up at a later period, and printed in the collection of Anglo-Saxon laws, it is stated that “It is also very needful to every mass-priest, that he diligently exhort and teach his parishioners that they be hospitable, and not refuse their houses to any wayfaring man, but do for his comfort, for love of God, what they then will or can; ... but let those who, for love of God, receive every stranger, desire not any worldly reward.” Bede describes as the first act of “the custom of hospitality” (mos hospitalitatis) the washing of the stranger’s feet and hands; they then offered him refreshment, and he was allowed to remain two nights without being questioned, after which period the host became answerable for his character. The ecclesiastical laws limited the hospitality to be shown to a priest to one night, because if he remained longer it was a proof that he was neglecting his duties.

Taverns of an ordinary description, where there was probably no accommodation for travellers, seem to have been common enough under the Anglo-Saxons and it must be confessed that there seems to be too much reason for believing that people spent a great deal of their leisure time in them; even the clergy appear to have been tempted to frequent them. In the Ecclesiastical Institutes, quoted above, mass-priests are forbidden to eat or drink at ale-houses (æt ceap-ealothelum). And it is stated in the same curious record that, “It is a very bad custom that many men practise, both on Sundays and also other mass-days; that is, that straightways at early morn they desire to hear mass, and immediately after the mass, from early morn the whole day over, in drunkenness and feasting they minister to their belly, not to God.”

Merchant travellers seem, in general, to have congregated together in parties or small caravans, both for companionship and as a measure of mutual defence against robbers. In such cases they probably carried tents with them, and formed little encampments at night, like the pedlars and itinerant dealers in later times. Men who travelled alone were exposed to other dangers besides that of robbery; for a solitary wanderer was always looked upon with suspicion, and he was in danger himself of being taken for a thief. He was compelled, therefore, by his own interest and by the law of the land, to show that he had no wish to avoid observation; one of the earlier Anglo-Saxon codes of laws, that of king Wihtræd, directed that “if a man come from afar, or a stranger go out of the high way, and he then neither shout nor blow a horn, he is to be accounted a thief, either to be slain, or to be redeemed.”

No. 52. Taking Toll.

So prevalent, indeed, was theft and unfair dealing among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and so much litigation and unjust persecution arose from disputed claims to property which had been, or was pretended to have been, purchased, that it was made illegal to buy or sell without witnesses. It would be easy to multiply examples of robbery and plunder from Anglo-Saxon writers; but I will only state that, according to the Ely history, some merchants from Ireland, having come to Cambridge in the time of king Edgar, to offer their wares for sale, perhaps at the annual festivities of the Beorna-wyl, mentioned above, a priest of the place was guilty of stealing a part of their merchandise. We know but little of the trades and forms of commercial dealings of the Anglo-Saxons; but we may take our leave of the period of which we have been hitherto treating, with a few figures relating to money matters, from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl. No. 603). The cut [No. 52] represents, apparently, a man in the market, or at the gates of a city, taking toll for merchandise. The scales are for weighing, not the merchandise, but the money. The word pund, or pound, implies that the money was reckoned by weight; and the word mancus, another term for a certain sum of money, is also considered to have been a weight. Anglo-Saxon writings frequently speak of money as given by weight. Our cut No. 53 is a representation of the merchant, or the toll-taker, seated before his account book, with his scales hanging to the desk. In the first of these cuts, a man holds the bag or purse, in which the money received for toll or merchandise is deposited. The cut [No. 54] represents the receiver pouring the money out of his bag into the cyst, or chest, in which it is to be locked up and kept in his treasury. It is hardly necessary to say that there were no banking-houses among the Anglo-Saxons. The chest, or coffer, in which people kept their money and other valuables, appears to have formed part of the furniture of the chamber, as being the most private apartment; and it may be remarked that a rich man’s wealth usually consisted much more in jewels and valuable plate than in money.

We cannot but remark how little change the manners and the sentiments of our Saxon forefathers underwent during the long period that we are in any way acquainted with them. During the reign of Edward the Confessor, Norman fashions were introduced at court, but their influence on the nation at large appears to have been very trifling. Even after the Norman conquest the English manners and fashions retained their hold on the people, and at later periods they continually re-appear to assert their natural rights among the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons.

CHAPTER V.
THE EARLY NORMAN PERIOD.—LUXURIOUSNESS OF THE NORMANS.—ADVANCE IN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.—THE KITCHEN AND THE HALL.—PROVISIONS AND COOKERY.—BEES.—THE DAIRY.—MEAL-TIMES AND DIVISIONS OF THE DAY.—FURNITURE.—THE FALDESTOL.—CHAIRS AND OTHER SEATS.

A great change was wrought in this country by the entrance of the Normans. From what we have seen, in the course of the preceding chapters, society seems for a long time to have been at a standstill among the Anglo-Saxons, as though it had progressed as far as its own simple vitality would carry it, and wanted some new impulse to move it onwards. By the entrance of the Normans, the Saxon aristocracy was destroyed; but the lower and, in a great measure, the middle classes were left untouched in their manners and customs, which they appear to have preserved for a considerable length of time without any material change. The Norman historians, who write with prejudice when they speak of the Saxons, describe their nobility as having become luxurious without refinement; and they tell us that the Normans introduced greater sobriety, accompanied with more ostentation. “The nobility,” says William of Malmesbury, “was given up to luxury and wantonness.... Drinking in parties was an universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses; unlike the Normans and French, who, in noble and splendid mansions, lived with frugality. The vices attendant on drunkenness, which enervate the human mind, followed.... In fine, the English at that time (under king Harold) wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, their skin adorned with punctured designs; they were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors; whose manners, in other respects, they adopted.”

Whatever moderation the Normans may have brought with them, or however they may have been restrained by the first Anglo-Norman monarch, it disappeared entirely under his son and successor: “when,” in the words of William of Malmesbury, “everything was so changed, that there was no man rich except the money-changer, and no clerks but lawyers.... The courtiers then preyed upon the property of the country people, and consumed their substance, taking the very meat from their mouths. Then was there flowing hair and extravagant dress; and then was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mince their gait, to walk with loose gesture, and half naked.” This increasing dissoluteness of manners appears to have received no effectual check under the reign of the first Henry; in the twenty-ninth year of which, the writer just quoted tells us that “a circumstance occurred in England, which may seem surprising to our long-haired gallants, who, forgetting what they were born, transform themselves into the fashion of females, by the length of their locks. A certain English knight, who prided himself on the luxuriance of his tresses, being conscience-stung on the subject, seemed to feel in a dream as though some person strangled him with his ringlets. Awaking in a fright, he immediately cut off all his superfluous hair. The example spread throughout England; and, as recent punishment is apt to affect the mind, almost all the barons allowed their hair to be cropped in a proper manner, without reluctance. But this decency was not of long continuance; for scarcely had a year expired, before all those who thought themselves courtly, relapsed into their former vice; they vied with women in length of locks, and wherever these were wanting, put on false tresses; forgetful, or rather ignorant, of the saying of the Apostle, ‘If a man nurture his hair, it is a shame to him.’” Public and private manners were gradually running into the terrible lawlessness of the reign of king Stephen.

William of Malmesbury points out as one of the more remarkable circumstances which distinguished the Normans from the Saxons, the magnitude and solidity of their domestic buildings. The Anglo-Saxons seem, indeed, to have preferred the old national prejudice of their race against confining themselves within stone walls, while the Normans and Franks, who were more influenced by Roman traditions, had become great builders. We have scarcely any information relative to the progress of domestic architecture under William the Conqueror, but the Norman chiefs seem from the first to have built themselves houses of a much more substantial character than those which they found in existence. The residence of the Conqueror, while engaged in his operations against the insurgents in the isle of Ely, is imperfectly described by the anonymous author of the life of Hereward. It consisted of the hall, kitchen, and other buildings, which were inclosed by hedges and fosses (per sepes et foveas), and it had an interior and exterior court. Towards the end of the Conqueror’s reign, and in that of his son, were raised those early Norman baronial castles, the masonry of which has withstood the ravages of so many centuries. Under William and his sons, few ordinary mansions and dwelling houses seem to have been built substantially of stone; I am not aware that there are any known remains of a stone mansion in this country older than the reign of Henry II. The miracles of St. Cuthbert, related by Reginald of Durham, contain one or two allusions to the private houses of the earlier part of the twelfth century. Thus a parishioner of Kellow, near Durham, in the time of bishop Walter Rufus (1133-1140), is described as passing the evening drinking with the parish priest; returning home late, he was pursued by dogs, and reaching his own house in great terror, contrived to shut the door (ostium domus) upon them. He then went up to what, from the context, appears to have been the window of an upper floor or garret (ad fenestram parietis), which he opened in order to look down with safety on his persecutors. He was suddenly seized with madness, and his family being roused, seized him, carried him down into the court (in area), and bound him to the seats (ad sedilia). The same writer tells the story of a blind woman in the city of Durham, who used to run her head against the projecting windows of the houses (ad fenestrarum dependentia foris laquearia).

No. 55. A Norman Carousal.

We trace in the illuminations of the earlier Norman period the custom of placing the principal apartment at an elevation from the ground. The simple plan of the stone-built house of the latter part of this century, consisted of a square room on the ground floor, often vaulted, and of one room above it, which was the principal apartment, and the sleeping-room. This was approached by a staircase, sometimes external and sometimes internal, and it had a fire-place (cheminée), though this was not always the case in the room below. The lower room was the hall, and the upper apartment was called a solar, or soller (solarium), a word which has been supposed to be derived from sol, the sun, which was more felt in this upper room than in the lower, inasmuch as it was better lighted—it was the sunny room. Yet, even here, the windows were small, and without glass. We learn from Joscelin de Brakelonde that, in the year 1182, Samson, abbot of Bury, while lodging in a grange, or manor-house, belonging to his abbey, narrowly escaped being burnt with the house, because the only door of the upper story in which he was lodged happened to be locked, and the windows were too narrow to admit of his passing through them. In the early English “Ancren Riewle,” or rule of nuns, published by the Camden Society, there are several allusions to the windows of the parlour, or private room, which show that they were not glazed, but usually covered with a cloth, or blind, which allowed sufficient light to pass, and that they had shutters on hinges which closed them entirely. In talking of the danger of indulging the eyes, the writer of this treatise (p. 50) says, “My dear sisters, love your windows”—they are called in the original text thurles, holes through the wall—“as little as you may, and let them be small, and the parlour’s least and narrowest; let the cloth in them be twofould, black cloth, the cross white within and without.” The writer goes on to moralise on the white cross upon a black ground. In another part of the book (p. 97), the author supposes that men may come and seek to converse with the nuns through the window, and goes on to say, “If any man become so mad and unreasonable that he put forth his hand towards the windowcloth (the thurl-cloth), shut the window quickly and leave him.” Under the hall, when it was raised above the level of the ground, there was often another vaulted room, which was the cellar, and which seems to have been usually entered from the inside of the building. In the accompanying cut ([No. 55]), taken from the celebrated tapestry of Bayeux, are seen Harold and his companions carousing in an apartment thus situated, and approached by a staircase from without. The object of this was, perhaps, partly to be more private, for the ordinary public hall at dinner times seems to have been invaded by troops of hungry hangers on, who ate up or carried away the provisions which were taken from the table, and became so bold that they seem to have often seized or tried to seize the provisions from the cooks as they carried them to the table. William Rufus established ushers of the hall and kitchen, whole duty it was to protect the guests and the cooks from this rude rabble. Gaimar’s description of that king’s grand feast at Westminster, contains some curious allusions to this practice. After telling us that three hundred ushers (ussers, i.e. huissiers), or doorkeepers, were appointed to occupy the entrance passages (us), who were to hand with rods to protect the guests as they mounted the steps from the importunity of the garsons— Cil cunduaient les barons
Par les degrez, pur les garçons;
Od les verges k’es mains teneient
As barons vaie fesaient,
Ke jà garçon ne s’apremast,
Si alcon d’els ne l’ comandast—
he adds, that those who carried the provisions and liquor to the table were also attended by these ushers, that the “lecheurs” might not snatch from them, or spoil, or break, the vessels in which they carried them:—

Ensement tut revenaient par els
Cil ki aportouent les mès
De la quisine e des mesters,
E li beveres e li mangers,
Icil usser les cunduaient,
Pur la vessele dunt servaient,
Ke lecheur ne les escheçast,
Ne malmeist, ne defrussast.
—Gaimar, Estorie des Englès, l. 5985.

No. 56. The Norman Butler in his Office.

No. 57. A Draw-Well.

In the cut from the Bayeux tapestry, the feasting-room is approached by what is evidently a staircase of stone. In our cut [No. 56], taken from a manuscript of the earlier half of the twelfth century in the Cottonian library (Nero, C. iv.), and illustrating the story of the marriage feast at Cana, the staircase is apparently of wood, little better than a ladder, and the servants who are carrying up the wine assist themselves in mounting by means of a rope. It is a picture which at the same time exhibits several characteristics of domestic life—the wine vessels, the cupboard in which they are kept, and the well in the court-yard, the latter being indicated by the tree. The butler, finding wine run short, sends the servant to draw water from the well. It may be remarked that this appears to have been the common machinery of the draw-well among our forefathers in the middle ages—a rude lever, formed by the attachment of a heavy weight, perhaps of lead, at one end of the beam, which was sufficient to raise the other end, and thus draw up the bucket. It occurs in illuminations in manuscripts of various periods; our example in cut No. 57 is taken from MS. Harl. No. 1257, of the fourteenth century.

No. 58. Norman Cooks and the Attendants serving at Table.

Whatever truth there may be in William of Malmesbury’s account of the sobriety of the Normans, there can be no doubt that the kitchen and the cooks formed with them a very important part of the household. According to the Bayeux tapestry, duke William brought with him from Normandy a complete kitchen establishment, and a compartment of that interesting monument, of which we here give a diminished copy, shows that when he landed he found no difficulty in providing a dinner. On the left two cooks are boiling the meat—for this still was the general way of cooking it, as it was usually eaten salted. Above them, on a shelf, are fowls, and other sorts of small viands, spitted ready for roasting. Another cook is engaged at a portable stove, preparing small cakes, pasties, &c., which he takes from the stove with a singularly formed fork to place them on the dish. Others are carrying to the table the roasted meats, on the spits. It will be observed that having no “board” with them to form a table, the Norman knights make use of their shields instead.

The reader of the life of Hereward will remember the scene in which the hero in disguise is taken into king William’s kitchen, to entertain the cooks. After dinner the wine and ale were distributed freely, and the result was a violent quarrel between the cooks and Hereward; the former used the tridents and forks for weapons (cum tridentibus et furcis), while he took the spit from the fire (de foco hastile) as a still more formidable weapon of defence. In the early Chanson de Roland, Charlemagne is described also carrying his cooks with him to the war, as William the Conqueror is pictured in the Bayeux tapestry, and they held so important a position in his household, that, when one of his most powerful barons, Guenelon, was accused of treason, Charlemagne is made to deliver him in custody to the charge of his cooks, who place him under the guard of a hundred of the “kitchen companions,” and these treat him much in the same way as king William’s cooks sought to treat Hereward, by cutting or plucking out his beard and whiskers.

Li reis fait prendre le cunte Guenelun,
Si l’ cumandat as cous de sa maisun,
Tut li plus maistre en apelet Besgun:
‘Ben le me guarde, si cume tel felon,
De ma maisnée ad faite traisun.’
Cil le receit, si met c. cumpaignons
De la quisine, des mielz e des pejurs;
Icil li peilent la barbe e les gernuns.
—Chanson de Roland, p. 71.

Alexander Neckam, in his Dictionarius (written in the latter part of the twelfth century), begins with the kitchen, as though he considered it as the most important part of a mansion, and describes its furniture rather minutely. There is good reason, however, for believing that the cooking was very commonly performed in the court of the house in the open air and perhaps it was intended to be represented so in the scene given above from the Bayeux tapestry. The cooks are there delivering the food through a door into the hall.

The Norman dinner-table, as shown in the Bayeux tapestry, differs not much from that of the Anglo-Saxons. A few dishes and basins contain viands which are not easy to be recognised, except the fish and the fowls. Most of the smaller articles seem to have been given by the cooks into the hands of the guests from the spits on which they had been roasted. Another dinner scene is represented in our cut [No. 59], taken from the Cottonian manuscript already mentioned (Nero, C. iv.). We see again similarly formed vessels to those used at table by the Anglo-Saxons. The bread is still made in round flat cakes, and is marked with a cross, and with a flower in the middle. The guests use no forks; their knives are different and more varied in their forms than under the Anglo-Saxons. Sometimes, indeed, the shape of the knives is almost grotesque. The one represented below, in our cut [No. 60], is taken from a group in the same manuscript which furnished the preceding cut; it is very singularly notched at the point.

No. 59. An Anglo-Saxon Dinner Party.

No. 60. A Knife.

We see in these dinner scenes that the Anglo-Normans used horns and cups for drinking, as the Anglo-Saxons did; but the use of the horn is becoming rare, and the bowl-shaped vessels appear to have been now the usual drinking cup. Among the wealthy these cups seem to have been made of glass. Reginald of Durham describes one of the monks as bringing water for a sick man to drink in a glass cup (vase vitreo), which was accidentally broken. In a splendidly illuminated manuscript of the Psalms, of the earlier half of the twelfth century, written by Eadwine, one of the monks of Canterbury, and which will afford much illustration for this period,[18] we find a figure of a servant giving to drink, who holds one of the same description of drinking cups which were so popular at an earlier period among the Anglo-Saxons (see our cut [No. 61]). He holds in the left hand the jug, which had now become the usual vessel for carrying the liquor in any quantity. In our cut No. 62, furnished by the same manuscript as the preceding, the servant is taking the jug of liquor from the barrel. Our next cut, [No. 63], also taken from the Cambridge MS., represents several forms of vessels for the table. Some of these are new to us; and they are on the whole more elegant than most of the forms we meet with in common pictures.

No. 63. Anglo-Norman Pottery.

Wine appears to have been now more frequently used than among the Anglo-Saxons. Neckam, in the latter part of the twelfth century, has given us a rather playful enumeration of the qualities of good wine; which he says should be as clear as the tears of a penitent, so that a man may see distinctly to the bottom of his glass; its colour “should represent the greenness of a buffalo’s horn; when drunk, it should descend impetuously like thunder, sweet-tasted as an almond, creeping like a squirrel, leaping like a roebuck, strong like the building of a Cistercian monastery, glittering like a spark of fire, subtle as the logic of the schools of Paris, delicate as fine silk, and colder than crystal.” Yet still ale and mead continued to be the usual drinks. The innumerable entries in Domesday Book show us how large a proportion of the productions of the country, in the reign of William the Conqueror, still consisted in honey, which was used chiefly for the manufacture of mead. The manuscript in Trinity College Library, gives us a group of bee-hives (cut [No. 64]), with peasants attending to them; and is chiefly curious for the extraordinary forms which the artist, evidently no naturalist, has given to the bees.

No. 64. Anglo-Norman Bee-keepers.

We have hardly any information on the cookery during the period we are now describing. It is clear that numerous delicacies were served to the tables of the noble and wealthy, but their culinary receipts are not preserved. We read in William of Malmesbury, incidentally, that a great prince ate garlick with a goose, from which we are led to suppose that the Normans were fond of highly-seasoned dishes. Neckam tells us that pork, roasted or broiled on red embers, required no other sauce than salt or garlick; that a capon done in gobbets should be well peppered; that a goose, roasted on the spit, required a strong garlick-sauce, mixed with wine or “the green juice of grapes or crabs;” that a hen, if boiled, should be cut up and seasoned with cummin, but, if roasted, it should be basted with lard, and might be seasoned with garlick-sauce, though it would be more savoury with simple sauce; that fish should be cooked in a sauce composed of wine and water, and that they should afterwards be served with a sauce composed of sage, parsley, cost, ditany, wild thyme, and garlick, with pepper and salt. We learn from other incidental allusions of contemporary, or nearly contemporary, writers, that bread, butter, and cheese, were the ordinary food of the common people, probably with little else besides vegetables. It is interesting to remark that the three articles just mentioned, have preserved their Anglo-Saxon names to the present times, while all kinds of meat, beef, veal, mutton, pork, even bacon, have retained only the names given to them by the Normans, which seems to imply that flesh-meat was not in general use for food among the lower classes of society.

Bread seems almost always to have been formed in cakes, like our buns, round in the earlier pictures, and in later ones (as in our cut [No. 63]), shaped more fancifully. We see it generally marked with a cross, perhaps a superstitious precaution of the baker. The bread seems to have been in general made for the occasion, and eaten fresh, perhaps warm. In one of Reginald of Durham’s stories, we are told of a priest in the forest of Arden, who, having nothing but a peck of corn left, and receiving a large number of visitors on a sacred festival, gave it out to be baked to provide for them. The corn was immediately ground, perhaps with querns, and having been mixed with “dewy” water, in the usual manner, was made into twelve loaves, and immediately placed in the hot oven.[19] Cheese and butter seem also to have been tolerably abundant. An illuminator of the Cambridge MS., given in our cut [No. 65], represents a man milking and another churning; he who churns appears, to use a vulgar phrase, to be “taking it at his ease.” The milking-pail, too, is rather extraordinary in its form.

No. 65. Anglo-Normans Milking and Churning.

We have not any distinct account of the hours at which our Norman ancestors took their meals, but they appear to have begun their day early. In the Carlovingian romances, everybody, not excepting the emperor and his court, rises at daybreak; and in Huon de Bordeaux (p. 270), one of the chief heroes is accused of laziness, because he was in bed after the cock had crowed. In the romance of Doon de Mayence, the feudal lord of that great city and territory is introduced exhorting his son to rise betimes, for, he says, “he who sleeps too long in the morning, becomes thin and lazy, and loses his day, if he does not amend himself.”

Qui trop dort au matin, maigre devient et las,
Et sa journée en pert, s’y n’en amende pas.
—Doon de Mayence, p. 76.

In the same romance, two of the heroes, Doon and Baudouin, also rise with the sun, and dress and wash, and then say their prayers; after which their attendant, Vaudri, “placed between them two a very large pasty, on a white napkin, and brought them wine, and then said to them in fair words, like a man of sense, ‘Sirs, you shall eat, if it please you; for eating early in the morning brings great health, and gives one greater courage and spirit; and drink a little of this choice wine, which will make you strong and fierce in fight.’ ... And when Doon saw it, he laughed, and began to eat and drink, and they breakfasted very pleasantly and peacefully.” John of Bromyard, who wrote at a later period, has handed down a story of a man who despaired of overcoming the difficulty he found in keeping the fasts, until he succeeded in the following manner: at the hour of matins (three o’clock in the morning), when he was accustomed to break his fast, and was greatly tempted to eat, he said to himself, “I will fast until tierce (nine o’clock), for the love of God;” and when tierce came, he said he would fast unto sext (the hour of noon), and so again he put off eating until none (three o’clock in the afternoon); and so he gradually learnt to fast all day. We may perhaps conclude that, at the time when this story was made, nine o’clock was the ordinary hour of dinner.

This last-mentioned meal was certainly served early in the day, and was often followed by recreations in the open air. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (p. 252), the Christian chiefs, after their dinner, go to amuse themselves on the sea-shore. In Doon de Mayence (p. 245), they play at chess and dice after dinner; and on another occasion, in the same romance (p. 314), the barons, after their dinner, sing and dance together; while in Fierabras (p. 185), Charlemagne and his court ride out on horseback, and set up a quintain, at which they justed all day (tout le jour—which would imply that they began early), until vespers (probably seven o’clock), when they returned into the palace to refresh themselves, and afterwards to go to bed. Supper was certainly served in the evening, and in these romances people are spoken of as going to bed immediately after it. On one occasion, in Doon de Mayence (p. 303), Charlemagne’s barons take no supper, but, after their beds are prepared, they are served plentifully with fruits and wine. In the same romance (p. 16), the guards of a castle go out, because it was a warm evening in summer, and have their supper laid out on a table in the field, where they remain long amusing themselves. In Fierabras (p. 68), the barons take a hot bath after dinner.

No. 66. A Faldestol.

Of the articles of household furniture during the period of which we are now writing, we cannot give many examples. We have every reason to believe that they were anything but numerous. A board laid upon tressels formed the usual dining table, and an ordinary bench or form the seat. In the French Carlovingian romances, the earlier of which may be considered as representing society in the twelfth century, even princes and great barons sit ordinarily upon benches. Thus, in the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (pp. 33, 36), Charlemagne invites the young chieftain, Huon, who had come to visit him in his palace, to sit on the bench and drink his wine; and in the same romance (p. 263), when Huon was received in the abbey of St. Maurice, near Bordeaux, he and the abbot sit together on a bench. Chairs belonged to great people. Our cut [No. 66], taken from the Trinity College Psalter, represents a chair of state, with its covering of drapery thrown over it. In some instances the cushion appears placed upon the drapery. This seat was the faldestol, a word which has been transformed in modern French to fauteuil (translated in English by elbow-chair). We read in the Chanson de Roland of the faldestol which was placed for princes, and of the covering of white “palie” (a rich stuff) which was spread over it. That of Charlemagne was of gold— Un faldestoed i unt fait tut d’or mer:
Là siet li reis qui dulce France tient.
—Chanson de Roland, p. 5.
The faldestol of the Saracen king of Spain was covered with a “palie” of Alexandrian manufacture,— Un faldestoet out suz l’umbre d’un pin,
Envolupet fut d’un palie Alexandrin;
Là fut li reis ki tute Espaigne tint.
—Ib. p. 17.
The infidel emir from Egypt, when he arrives in Spain, is seated in the midst of his host, on a faldestol of ivory. Sur l’erbe verte getent un palie blanc,
Un faldestoed i unt mis d’olifan;
Desuz s’asiet li paien Baligant.
—Ib. p. 102.
The faldestol was not always made of such rich materials. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, Charlemagne is represented as sitting in a faldestol made of elm.

Karles monta ens el palais plenier;
Il est asis u faudestuef d’ormier.
Huon de Bordeaux, p. 286.

No. 67. Two Chiefs Seated.

The mouldings of the faldestol in the cut [No. 66] will be recognised as exactly the same which are found on old furniture of a much more recent period, and which, in fact, are those which offer themselves most readily to ordinary turners. The same ornament is seen on the chair represented in our cut [No. 67], taken from the same manuscript as the last, in which two men are seated, in a very singular manner. It was not uncommon, however, to have seats which held several persons together, such as the one represented in an Anglo-Saxon illumination given in a former chapter (p. 31), and such as are still to be seen in country public-houses, where they have preserved the Anglo-Saxon name of settle. One of these is represented in our cut [No. 68]. The persons seated in it, in this case, are learned men, and the cross above seems to show that they are monks. One has a table-book, and two of the others have rolls of parchment, which are all evidently the subject of anxious discussion.

No. 68. An Anglo-Norman Settle.

Chairs, and even stools, were, as has been already observed, by no means abundant in these early times, and we can easily suppose that it would be a difficult thing to accommodate numerous visitors with seats. To remedy this, when houses were built of stone, it was usual to make, in the public apartments, seats, like benches, in recesses in the wall, or projecting from it, which would accommodate a number of persons at the same time. We find such seats usually in the cloisters of monasteries, as well as in the chapter-houses of our cathedral churches. In the latter they generally run round the room, and are divided by arches into seats which were evidently intended to accommodate two persons each, for the convenience of conversation. This practice is illustrated by our cut No. 69, taken, like the preceding one, from the Cambridge Manuscript; it represents a group of seats of this kind, in which monks (apparently) are seated and conversing two and two.

No. 69. Seats in the Wall.

CHAPTER VI.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 77. Norman Travellers.

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.

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.

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.