Chapter XIV

AMUSEMENTS.--PERFORMING BEARS.--HAWKING AND
HUNTING.--RIDING.--CARRIAGES.--TRAVELLING.--INNS AND
TAVERNS.--HOSPITALITY.

During the period of which we are treating, the same rough sports were in vogue among the uneducated classes that had existed for ages before, and which continued for ages after. Many of these were trials of strength, such as wrestling and throwing weights, with archery, and other exercises of that description; others were of a less civilised character, such as cockfighting and bear and bull-baiting. These latter were favourite amusements, and there was scarcely a town or village of any magnitude which had not its bull-ring. It was a municipal enactment in all towns and cities that no butcher should be allowed to kill a bull until it had been baited. The bear was an animal in great favour in the middle ages, and was not only used for baiting, but was tamed and taught various performances. I have already, in a former chapter, given an example of a dancing bear under the Anglo-Saxons; the accompanying cut (No. 199) is another, taken from a manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Arundel. No. 91).

I fear the fact cannot be concealed that the ladies of former days assisted not unfrequently at these rough and unfeminine pastimes. There can be no doubt that they were customary spectators of the baiting of bulls and bears. Henry VIII.’s two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, witnessed this coarse amusement, as we are assured by contemporary writers, with great satisfaction. The scene represented in our cut No. 200, which is copied from one of the carved seats, of the fourteenth century, in Gloucester cathedral, is chiefly remarkable for the small degree of energy--the quiet dignity, in fact--displayed by the actors in it.

Hawking and hunting, especially the former, were the favourite recreations of the upper classes. Hawking was considered so honourable an occupation, that people were in the custom of carrying the hawk on their fists when they walked or rode out, when they visited or went to public assemblies, and even in church, as a mark of their gentility. In the illuminations we not unfrequently see ladies and gentlemen seated in conversation, bearing their hawks on their hands. There was generally a _perche_ in the chamber expressly set aside for the favourite bird, on which he was placed at night, or by day when the other occupations of its possessor rendered it inconvenient to carry it on the hand. Such a _perche_, with the hawk upon it, is represented in our cut No. 201, taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” of the fourteenth century (MS. Addit. in the British Museum, No. 12,224). Hawking was in some respects a complicated science; numerous treatises were written to explain and elucidate it, and it was submitted to strict laws. Much knowledge and skill were shown in choosing the hawks, and in breeding and training them, and the value of a well-chosen and well-trained bird was considerable. When carried about by its master or mistress, the hawk was held to the hand by a strap of leather or silk, called a _jesse_, which was fitted to the legs of the bird, and passed between the fingers of the hand. Small bells were also attached to their legs, one on each. The accompanying cut (No. 202), from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (No. 6956), represents the falconer or keeper of the hawks holding in one hand what appears to be the jesse; he has a bird in his right hand, while another is perched on a short post, which is often alluded to in the directions for breeding hawks. The falconer wears hawks’ gloves, which were made expressly to protect the hands against the bird’s talons.

Hawking was a favourite recreation with the ladies, and in the illuminated manuscripts they often figure in scenes of this kind. Sometimes they are on foot, as in the group represented in our cut No. 203, taken from a manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.). One lady has let go her hawk, which is in the act of striking a heron; the other retains her hawk on her hand. The latter, as will be seen, is hooded. Each of the ladies who possess hawks has one glove only--the hawk’s glove; the other hand is without gloves. They took with them, as shown here, dogs in couples to start the game. The dogs used for this purpose were spaniels, and the old treatise on domestic affairs entitled “Le Ménagier de Paris,” gives particular directions for choosing them. In the illuminations, hawking parties are more frequently represented on horseback than on foot; and often there is a mixture of riders and pedestrians. The treatise just referred to directs that the horse for hawking should be a low one, easy to mount and dismount, and very quiet, that he may go slowly, and show no restiveness. Hawking appears to have commenced at the beginning of August; and until the middle of that month it was confined almost entirely to partridges. Quails, we are told, came in in the middle of August, and from that time forward everything seems to have been considered game that came to hand, for when other birds fail, the ladies are told that they may hunt fieldfares, and even jays and magpies. September and October were the busiest hawking months.

Hawking was, indeed, a favourite diversion with the ladies, and they not only accompanied the gentlemen to this sport, but frequently engaged in it alone. The hawking of the ladies, however, appears to have been especially that of herons and water-fowl; and this was called going to the river (_aller en rivière_), and was very commonly pursued on foot. It may be mentioned that the fondness of the ladies for the diversion of hawking is alluded to in the twelfth century by John of Salisbury. The hawking on the river, indeed, seems to have been that particular branch of the sport which gave most pleasure to all classes, and it is that which is especially represented in the drawings in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Dogs were commonly used in hawking to rouse the game in the same manner as at the present day, but in hawking on the river, where dogs were of course less effective, other means were adopted. In a manuscript already quoted in the present chapter (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), of the beginning of the fourteenth century, a group of ladies hawking on the banks of a river are accompanied by a man, perhaps the falconer, who makes a noise to rouse the water-fowl. Our cut No. 204 is taken from a very interesting manuscript of the fourteenth century, made for the monastery of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, and now preserved in the library of the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.); it is part of a scene in which ladies are hawking on a river, and a female is rousing the water-fowl with a tabor. The fountain is one of those conventional objects by which the mediæval artist indicated a spring, or running stream. This seems to have been a very common method of rousing the game; and it is represented in one of the carved seats, or misereres (as they have been termed technically), in Gloucester cathedral, which is copied in our cut No. 205. This scene is rather curiously illustrated by an anecdote told by an old chronicler, Ralph de Diceto, of a man who went to the river to hunt teal with his hawk, and roused them with “what is called by the river-hawkers a tabor.”[49] The tending of the hawks used in these diversions was no slight occupation in the mediæval household, and was the subject of no little study; they were cherished with the utmost care, and carried about familiarly on the wrist in all places and under all sorts of circumstances. It was a common practice, indeed, to go to church with the hawk on the wrist. One of the early French poets, Gaces de la Buigne, who wrote a metrical treatise on hunting in the middle of the fourteenth century, advises his readers to carry their hawks with them wherever there were assemblies of people, whether in churches or elsewhere--

_Là où les gens sont amassés,_
_Soit en l’église, ou autre part._

This is explained more fully by the author of the “Ménagier de Paris” (vol. ii. p. 296), who wrote especially for the instruction of the female members of his family. “At this point of falconry,” he says, “it is advisable more than ever to hold the hawk on the wrist, and to carry it to the pleadings (courts of justice), and among people to the churches, and in other assemblies, and in the streets, and to hold it day and night as continually as possible, and sometimes to perch it in the streets, that it may see people, horses, carts, dogs, and become acquainted with all things.... And sometimes, in the house, let it be perched on the dogs, that the dogs may see it, and it them.” It was thus that the practice of carrying a hawk on the wrist became a distinction of people of gentle blood. The annexed engraving (No. 206), taken from the same manuscript last quoted (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), represents a lady tending her hawks, which are seated on their “perche.”

The author of the “Ménagier de Paris,” a little farther on than the place last quoted (p. 311), goes on to say, “At the end of the month of September, and after, when hawking of quails and partridges is over, and even in winter, you may hawk at magpies, at jackdaws, at teal, which are in river, or others, ... at blackbirds, thrushes, jays, and woodcocks; and for this purpose you may carry a bow and a bolt, in order that, when the blackbird takes shelter in a bush, and dare not quit it for the hawk which hovers over and watches it, the lady or damsel who knows how to shoot may kill it with the bolt.” The manuscript which has furnished us with the preceding illustrations gives us the accompanying sketch (No. 207) of a lady shooting with her bolt, or _boujon_ (as it was termed in French),--an arrow with a large head, for striking birds; but in this instance she is aiming not at birds, but at rabbits. Archery was also a favourite recreation with the ladies in the middle ages, and it no doubt is in itself an extremely good exercise, in a gymnastic point of view. The fair shooters seem to have employed bolts more frequently than the sharp-headed arrows; but there is no want of examples in the illuminated manuscripts in which females are represented as using the sharp-headed arrow, and sometimes they are seen shooting at deer. This custom prevailed during a long period, and is alluded to not unfrequently at so late a date as the sixteenth century. We learn from Leland’s “Collectanea” (vol. iv. p. 278), that when the princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., was on her way to Scotland, a hunting-party was got up for her in the park at Alnwick, and that she killed a buck with an arrow. Similar feats were at times performed by queen Elizabeth; but she seems to have preferred the cross-bow to the long-bow. The scene represented in our cut No. 208 is from the same manuscript; the relative proportions of the dog and the rabbit seem to imply a satirical aim. Our next cut (No. 209), taken from MS. Reg. 2 B. vii., represents ladies hunting the stag. One, on horseback, is winding the horn and starting the game, in which the other plants her arrow most skilfully and scientifically. The dog used on this occasion is intended to be a greyhound.

It must be remarked that, in all the illuminations of the period we are describing, which represent ladies engaged in hunting or hawking, when on horseback they are invariably and unmistakeably represented riding astride. This is evidently the case in this group (No. 209). It has been already shown, in former chapters, that from a very early period it was a usual custom with the ladies to ride sideways, or with side-saddles. Most of the mediæval artists were so entirely ignorant of perspective, and they were so much tied to conventional modes of representing things, that when, no doubt, they intended to represent ladies riding sideways, the latter seem often as if they were riding astride. But in many instances, and especially in the scenes of hunting and hawking, there can be no doubt that they were riding in the latter fashion; and it is probable that they were taught to ride both ways, the side-saddle being considered the most courtly, while it was considered safer to sit astride in the chase. A passage has been often quoted from Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” in which a troop of ladies is described, all mounted on fair white ambling horses, with splendid saddles, and it is added that “everichone (_every one_) ride on side,” which probably means that this was the most fashionable style of riding. But, as shown in a former chapter (p. 72), it has been rather hastily assumed that this is a proof that it was altogether a new fashion. Our next cut (No. 210), taken from a manuscript in the French National Library (No. 7178), of the fourteenth century, represents two ladies riding in the modern fashion, except that the left leg appears to be raised very awkwardly; but this appearance we must perhaps ascribe only to the bad drawing. It must be observed also that these ladies are seated on the wrong side of the horse, which is probably an error of the draughtsman. Perhaps there was a different arrangement of the dress for the two modes of riding, although there was so little of what we now call delicacy in the mediæval manners, that this would be by no means necessary. Chaucer describes the Wife of Bath as wearing spurs, and as enveloped in a “foot-mantle:”--

_Uppon an amblere esely sche sat,_
_Wymplid ful wel, and on hire heed an hat_
_As brood as is a bocler, or a targe;_
_A foot-mantel aboute hire hupes_ (hips) _large,_
_And on hire feet a paire of spores scharpe_.
--Cant. Tales, l. 471.

Travelling on horseback was now more common than at an earlier period, and this was not unfrequently a subject of popular complaint. In fact, men who rode on horseback considered themselves much above the pedestrians; they often went in companies, and were generally accompanied with grooms, and other riotous followers, who committed all sorts of depredations and violence on the peasantry in their way. A satirical song of the latter end of the reign of Edward I., represents our Saviour as discouraging the practice of riding. “While God was on earth,” says the writer, “and wandered wide, what was the reason he would not ride? Because he would not have a groom to go by his side, nor the grudging (or discontent) of any gadling to jaw or to chide:”--

_Whil God was on erthe_
_And wondrede wyde,_
_Whet wes the resoun_
_Why he nolde ryde?_

_For he nolde no groom_
_To go by hys syde,_
_Ne grucchyng of no gedelyng_
_To chaule ne to chyde._

“Listen to me, horsemen,” continues this satirist, “and I will tell you news--that ye shall hang, and be lodged in hell:”--

_Herkneth hideward, horsmen,_
_A tidyng ich ou telle,_
_That ye shulen hongen,_
_Ant herbarewen in helle!_

The clergy were great riders, and abbots and monks are not unfrequently figured on horseback. Our cut No. 211 (from MS. Cotton, Nero, D. vii.) represents an abbot riding, with a hat over his hood; he is giving his benediction in return to the salute of some passing traveller.

The knight still carried his spear with him in travelling, as the footman carried his staff. In our cut No. 212, from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (No. 6963), the rider, though not armed, carries his spear with him. The saddle in this instance is singularly and rather rudely formed. It was a great point of vanity in the middle ages in England to hang the caparisons of the horse with small bells, which made a jingling noise. In the romance of “Richard Cœur de Lion” (Weber ii. 60), a messenger coming to king Richard has no less than five hundred such bells suspended to his horse--

_His trappys wer off tuely sylke,_
_With five hundred belles rygande._

And again, in the same romance (vol. ii. p. 223), we are told, in speaking of the sultan of “Damas,” that his horse was well furnished in this respect--

_Hys crouper heeng al fulle off belles,_
_And hys peytrel, and hys arsoun;_
_Three myle myghte men here the soun._

The bridle, however, was the part of the harness usually loaded with bells, and, according to Chaucer, it was a vanity especially affected by the monks; for the poet tells us of his monk, that--

_Whan he rood, men might his bridel heere_
_Gyngle in a whistlyng wynd so cleere,_
_And eek as lowde as doth the chapel belle._
--Cant. Tales, l. 169.

The rider is seldom furnished with a whip, because he urged his steed forward with his spurs; but female riders and persons of lower degree have often whips, which generally consist of several lashes, each having usually a knob at the end. Such a whip is seen in our cut No. 213, taken from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Arundel. No. 91), which represents a countryman driving a horse of burthen; and he not only uses the whip, but he tries further to urge him on by twisting his tail. A whip with one lash--rather an unusual example--is in the hand of the woman driving the cart in our cut No. 214, which is taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the French National Library (No. 6961), belonging to the fourteenth century. The lady here is also evidently riding astride. The cart in which she is carrying home the wounded knight is of a simple and rude construction. As yet, indeed, carriages for travelling were very little in use; and to judge by the illuminations, they were only employed for kings and very powerful nobles in ceremonial processions.

The horse was, after a man’s own limbs, his primary agent of locomotion. Perhaps no animal is so intimately mixed up with the history of mankind as the horse--certainly none more so. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers travelled much on foot, and, as far as we know, the great importance in which the horse was held in the middle ages in this part of the world, began with feudalism, and the best and most celebrated breed of horses in Europe, from the earliest ages of chivalry, was brought from the East. The heroes of early romance and poetry are generally mounted on _Arab_ steeds, and these have often the additional merit of having been won by conquest from the Saracens. In the thirteenth century they were obtained from Turkey and Greece; and at a later period from Barbary. France, also, had its native breed, which enjoyed a high reputation for many valuable qualities, and especially for its fierceness in war; Gascony, and, on the other side of the Spanish frontier, Castile and Aquitaine, were much celebrated for their horses. The Gascons prided themselves much on their horses, and they displayed this pride sometimes in a very singular manner. In 1172, Raymond de Venous, count of Toulouse, held a grand _cour plénière_, and, as a display of ostentation, caused thirty of his horses to be burnt in presence of the assembly. It was a fine example of the barbarity of feudalism. At the provincial synod of Auch, held in 1303, it was ordered that archdeacons, when they made their diocesan circuits, should not go with more than five horses, which shows that the Gascon clergy were in the habit of making a great display of cavalry. It appears that at this early period the best horses were imported into England from Bordeaux. It may be mentioned, in passing, that the male horse only was ridden by knights or people of any distinction, and that to ride a mare was always looked upon as a degradation. This seems to have been an old Teutonic prejudice, perhaps a religious superstition.

The kinds of horses most commonly mentioned in the feudal ages are named in French (which was the language of feudalism), the _palefroi_, or palfrey, the _dextrier_, the _roncin_, and the _sommier_. The _dextrier_, or _destrier_, was the ordinary war-horse; the _roncin_ belonged especially to the servants and attendants; and the _sommier_ carried the luggage. Ladies especially rode the palfrey. The Orkney islands appear to have been celebrated for their _dextriers_. The Isle of Man seems also to have produced a celebrated breed of horses. Brittany was celebrated for its palfreys. The _haquenée_, or hackney, of the middle ages, appears to have been especially reserved for females. England seems not to have been celebrated for its horses in the middle ages, and the horses of value possessed by the English kings and great nobles were, in almost all cases, imported from the Continent. The ordinary prices of horses in England in the reign of Edward I., was from one to ten pounds, but choice animals were valued much higher. When St. Louis returned to France from his captivity, the abbot of Cluny presented to the king and the queen each a horse, the value of which Joinville estimates at five hundred livres, equivalent to about four hundred pounds of our present English money. These must have been horses which possessed some very extraordinary qualities, as the price is quite out of proportion to that of other horses at the same period. In the charters published by M. Guérard, horses are valued at forty sols, and at three pounds at various periods during the eleventh century. In 1202, two _roncins_ are valued at thirty sols each, another at forty, two at fifty each, and two at sixty; the _roncin_ of an arbalester at sixty sols; a _sommier_, or baggage-horse, at forty sols; and three horses, of which the kind is not specified, at six pounds each. These appear to have been the ordinary prices at that period; for, though prices of horses are mentioned as high as thirty-four, thirty-five, and forty pounds, these were only possessed or given as presents by kings. The value of horses went on rising through the thirteenth century, until Philippe le Hardi found it necessary to fix it by an _ordonnance_, which limited the price which any man, whether lay or clergy, however rich, might give for a palfrey, to sixty pounds _tournois_, and that to be given by a squire for a _roncin_ to twenty pounds. The prices of horses appear not to have varied much from this during the fourteenth century. In the middle of the century following the prices rose much higher.

Of the colours of horses, in the middle ages, white seems to have been prized most highly, and after that dapple-gray and bay or chestnut. The same colours were in favour among the Arabs. One of the poets of the thirteenth century, Jean Bodel, describes a choice Gascon horse as follows:--“His hair,” he says, “was more shining than the plumage of a peacock; his head was lean, his eye gray like a falcon, his breast large and square, his crupper broad, his thigh round, and his rump tight. They who saw it said that they had never seen a handsomer animal.” The food given to horses in the middle ages seems to have been much the same as at the present day. In 1435 the queen of Navarre gave carrots to her horses. Although the mediæval knight resembled the Arab in his love for his horse, yet the latter was often treated hardly and even cruelly, and the practice of horsemanship was painful to the rider and to the horse. To be a skilful rider was a first-rate accomplishment. One of the feats of horsemanship practised ordinarily was to jump into the saddle, in full armour:--

_No foot Fitzjames in stirrup staid,_
_No grasp upon the saddle laid;_
_But wreath’d his left hand in the mane,_
_And lightly bounded from the plain._

Though horse-races are mentioned in two of the earliest of the French metrical romances, those of “Renaud de Montauban,” and of “Aiol,” they seem never to have been practised in France until very recently, when they were introduced in imitation of the English fashion. Post-horses were first introduced in France during the reign of Henry II., that is, in the middle of the sixteenth century.

Great importance was placed in the breeding of horses in the middle ages. Charlemagne, in the regulations for the administration of his private domains, gives particular directions for the care of his brood-mares and stallions. Normandy appears to have been famous for its studs of horses in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and documents show that the monks took good care rigorously to exact the tithes of their produce to stock the monastic stables. Traces of the existence of similar studs are found also in other parts of France. At this time a horse was considered the handsomest present that could be made by a king or a great lord, and horses were often given as bribes. Thus, in 1227, the monks of the abbey of Troarn obtained from Guillaume de Tilli the ratification of a grant made to them by his father in consideration of a gift to him of a mark of silver and a palfrey; and the monks of St. Evroul, in 1165, purchased a favour of the English earl of Gloucester by presenting to him two palfreys estimated to be worth twenty pounds of money of Anjou. Kings frequently received horses as presents from their subjects. The widow of Herbert du Mesnil gave king John of England a palfrey to obtain the wardship of her children; and one Geoffrey Fitz-Richard gave the same monarch a palfrey for a concession in the forest of Beaulieu. In 1172, Raimond, count of St. Gilles, having become the vassal of the king of England, engaged to pay him an annual tribute of a hundred marks of silver, or ten _dextriers_, worth at least ten marks each. The English studs appear already in the thirteenth century to have become remarkable for their excellence.

Travelling, in the middle ages, was assisted by few, it any, conveniences, and was dangerous as well as difficult. The insecurity of the roads made it necessary for travellers to associate together for protection, as well as for company, for their journeys were slow and dull; and as they were often obliged to halt for the night where there was little or no accommodation, they had to carry a good deal of luggage. An inn was often the place of rendezvous for travellers starting upon the same journey. It is thus that Chaucer represents himself as having taken up his quarters at the Tabard, in Southwark, preparatory to undertaking the journey to Canterbury; and at night there arrived a company of travellers bent to the same destination, who had gathered together as they came along the road:--

_At night was come into that hostelrie_
_Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,_
_Of sondry folk, by aventure ifalle_
_In felaschipe._
--Cant. Tales, l. 23.

Chaucer obtains the consent of the rest to his joining their fellowship, which, as he describes it, consisted of persons most dissimilar in class and character. The host of the Tabard joins the party also, and it is agreed that, to enliven the journey, each, in his turn, shall tell a story on the way. They then sup at a common table, drink wine, and go to bed; and at daybreak they start on their journey. They travelled evidently at a slow pace; and at Boughton-under-Blee--a village a few miles from Canterbury--a canon and his yeoman, after some hard riding, overtake them, and obtain permission to join the company. It would seem that the company had passed a night somewhere on the road, probably at Rochester,--and we should, perhaps, have had an account of their reception and departure, had the collection of the “Canterbury Tales” been completed by their author,--and that the canon sent his yeoman to watch for any company of travellers who should halt at the hostelry, that he might join them, but he had been too late to start with them, and had, therefore, ridden hard to overtake them:--

_His yeman eek was ful of curtesye,_
_And seid, “Sires, now in the morwe tyde_
_Out of your ostelry I saugh you ryde,_
_And warned heer my lord and soverayn,_
_Which that to ryden with yow is ful fayn,_
_For his disport; he loveth daliaunce.”_
--Cant. Tales, l. 12,515.

A little further on, on the road, the Pardoner is called upon to tell his tale. He replies--

_“It schal be doon,” quod he, “and that anoon._
_But first,” quod he, “here, at this ale-stake,_
_I will both drynke and byten on a cake.”_
--Ibid., l. 13,735.

The road-side ale-house, where drink was sold to travellers, and to the country-people of the neighbourhood, was scattered over the more populous and frequented parts of the country from an early period, and is not unfrequently alluded to in popular writers. It was indicated by a stake projecting from the house, on which some object was hung for a sign, and is sometimes represented in the illuminations of manuscripts. Our cut No. 215, taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), represents one of those ale-houses, at which a pilgrim is halting to take refreshment. The keeper of the ale-house, in this instance, is a woman, the ale-wife, and the stake appears to be a besom. In another (No. 216), taken from a manuscript copy of the “Moralization of Chess,” by Jacques de Cessoles, of the earlier part of the fifteenth century (MS. Reg. 19 C. xi.), a round sign is suspended on the stake, with a figure in the middle, which may possibly be intended to represent a bush. A garland was not unfrequently hung upon the stake; on this Chaucer, describing his “sompnour,” says:--

_A garland had he set upon his heed,_
_As gret as it were for an ale-stake._
--Cant. Tales, l. 688.

A bush was still more common, and gave rise to the proverb that “good wine needs no bush,” that is, it will be easily found out without any sign to direct people to it. A bush suspended to the sign of a tavern will be seen in our cut (No. 224) to the present chapter.

Lydgate composed his poem of the “Storie of Thebes,” as a continuation of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” and in the prologue he describes himself as arriving in Canterbury, while the pilgrims were there, and accidentally taking up his lodging at the same inn. He thus seeks and obtains permission to be one of the fellowship, and returns from Canterbury in their company. Our cut No. 217, taken from a fine manuscript of Lydgate’s poem (MS. Reg. 18 D. ii.), represents the pilgrims leaving Canterbury, and is not only a good illustration of the practice of travelling in companies, but it furnishes us with a characteristic picture of a mediæval town.

This readiness of travellers to join company with each other was not confined to any class of society, but was general among them all, and not unfrequently led to the formation of friendships and alliances between those who had previously been strangers to one another. In the interesting romance of “Blonde of Oxford,” composed in the thirteenth century, when Jean of Dammartin came to seek his fortune in England, and was riding from Dover to London, attended by a faithful servant, he overtook the earl of Oxford, who was on his way to London, with a numerous retinue of armed followers. Jean, having learnt from the earl’s followers who he was, introduced himself to him, and was finally taken into his service. Subsequently, in the same romance, Jean of Dammartin, returning to England, takes up his lodging in a handsome hotel in London, and while his man Robin puts the horses in the stable, he walks out into the street, and sees a large company who had just arrived, consisting of squires, servants, knights, clerks, priests, serving-lads (_garçons_), and men who attended the baggage horses (_sommiers_). Jean asked one of the esquires who they all were, what was their business, and where they were going; and was informed that it was the earl of Gloucester, who had come to London about some business, and was going on the morrow to Oxford, to be married to the lady Blonde, the object of Jean’s affections. Next morning the earl began his journey at daybreak, and Jean and his servant, who were mounted ready, joined the company. There was so little unusual in this, that the intruders seem, for a while, not to have been noticed, until, at length, the earl observed Jean, and began to interrogate him: “Friend,” said he, “you are welcome; what is your name?”--

_Amis, bien fustes vené,_
_Coment fu vostre non pelé?_
--Romance of Blonde, l. 2,627.

Jean gave him an assumed name, said he was a merchant, and offered to sell the earl his horse, but they could not agree upon the terms. They continued conversing together during the rest of the journey. As they proceeded they encountered a shower of rain, which wetted the earl, who was fashionably and thinly clothed. Jean smiled at the impatience with which he seemed to bear this mishap, and when asked to tell the cause of his mirth, said, “If I were a rich man, like you, I should always carry a house with me, so that I could go into it when the rain came, and not get my clothes dirtied and wet.” The earl and his followers set Jean down for a fool, and looked forward to be made merry by him. Soon afterwards they came to the banks of a river, into which the earl rode, without first ascertaining if it were fordable, and he was carried away by the stream, and only saved from drowning by a fisherman in a boat. The rest of the company found a ford, where they passed the river without danger. The earl’s clothes had now been completely soaked in the water, and, as his baggage-horses were too far in the rear, he made one of his knights strip, and give him his dry clothes, and left him to make the best of his wet ones. “If I were as rich, and had so many men, as you,” said Jean, laughing again, “I would not be exposed to misfortunes of this kind, for I would carry a bridge with me.” The earl and his retinue were merry again, at what they supposed to be the folly of their travelling companion. They were now near Oxford, and Jean took his leave of the earl of Gloucester. We learn, in the course of the story, that all that Jean meant by the house, was that the earl ought to have had at hand a good cloak and cape to cover his fine clothes in case of rain; and that, by the bridge, he intended to intimate that he ought to have sent some of his men to ascertain the depth of the river before he went into it!

These illustrations of the manner and inconveniences of travelling apply more especially to those who could travel on horseback; but the difficulties were still greater for the numerous class of people who were obliged to travel on foot, and who could rarely make sure of reaching, at the end of each day’s journey, a place where they could obtain a lodging. They, moreover, had also to take with them a certain quantity of baggage. Foot-travellers seem to have had sometimes a mule or a donkey, to carry luggage, or for the weak women and children. Every one will remember the mediæval fable of the old man and his ass, in which a father and his son have the one ass between them. In mediæval illuminations representing the flight into Egypt, Joseph is often represented as walking, while the Virgin and Child ride upon an ass which he is leading. The party of foot-travellers in our cut No. 218, taken from a manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), forms part of a group representing the relatives of Thomas Beckett driven into exile by king Henry II.; they are making their way to the sea-shore on foot, perhaps to show that they were not of very high condition in life.

In Chaucer, it is a matter of surprise that the “chanoun” had so little luggage that he carried only a male, or portmanteau, on his horse’s crupper, and even that was doubled up (_tweyfold_) on account of its emptiness:--

_A male tweyfold on his croper lay,_
_It seemed that he caried litel array,_
_Al light for somer rood this worthy man._
--Cant. Tales, l. 12,494.

On the contrary, in the romance of “Berte,” when the heroine is left to wander in the solitary forest, the writer laments that she had “neither pack-horse laden with coffers, nor clothes folded up in males,” which were the ordinary accompaniments of travellers of any consequence:--

_N’i ot sommier à coffres ne dras troussés en male._
--Roman de Berte, p. 42.

A traveller, indeed, had many things to carry with him. He took provisions with him, or was obliged, at times, to reckon on what he could kill, or obtain undressed, and hence he was obliged to carry cooking apparatus with him. He carried flint and steel to strike a light, and be able to make a fire, as he might have to bivouac in a solitary place, or in the midst of a forest. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” when the count Begues of Belin finds himself benighted in the forest, he prepares for passing the night comfortably, and, as a matter of course, draws out his flint (_fusil_), and lights a fire:--

_Et li quens est desous l’arbre ramé;_
_Prent son fusil, s’a le fu alumé,_
_Grant et plenier, merveilleus embrasé._
--Garin le Loherain, ii., p. 231.

The traveller also often carried materials for laying a bed, if benighted on the road; and he had, above all, to take sufficient money with him in specie. He sometimes also carried a portable tent with him, or materials for making one. In the English romance of “Ipomydon” (Weber, ii. 343), the maiden messenger of the heiress of Calabria carries her tent with her, and usually lodges at night under it--

_As they rode by the way,_
_The mayde to the dwarfe gan saye,_
_“Undo my tente, and sette it faste,_
_For here a whyle I wille me ryste.”_
_Mete and drynke bothe they had,_
_That was fro home with them lad._

It may be remarked that in this story the first thought of every gallant knight who passes is to treat the lady with violence. All these incumbrances, combined with the badness of the roads, rendered travelling slow--of which we might quote abundant examples. At the end of the twelfth century, it took Giraldus Cambrensis four days to travel from Powisland to Haughmond Abbey, near Shrewsbury. The roads, too, were infested with robbers and banditti, and travellers were only safe in their numbers, and in being sufficiently well armed to repel attacks. In the accompanying cut (No. 219), from a manuscript of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), a traveller is taking his repose under a tree,--it is, perhaps, intended to be understood that he is passing the night in a wood,--while he is plundered by robbers, who are here jokingly represented in the forms of monkeys. While one is emptying his “male” or box, the other is carrying off his girdle, with the large pouch attached to it, in which, no doubt, the traveller carried his money, and perhaps his eatables. The insecurity of the roads in the middle ages was, indeed, very great, for not only were the forests filled with bands of outlaws, who stripped all who fell into their hands, but the knights and landed gentry, and even noblemen, took to the highways not unfrequently, and robbed unscrupulously. Moreover, they built their castles near difficult passes, or by a river where there was a bridge or ford, and where, therefore, they commanded it, and there they levied arbitrary taxes on all who passed, and, on the slightest attempt at resistance, plundered the traveller of his property, and put him to death or threw him into their dungeons. Incidents of this kind are common in the mediæval romances and stories. Piers de Bruville, in the history of Fulke Fitz-Warine, may be mentioned as an example of this class of marauders. “At that time,” says the story, “there was a knight in the country who was called Piers de Bruville. This Piers used to collect all the sons of gentlemen of the country who were wild, and other ribald people, and used to go about the country, and slew and robbed loyal people, merchants, and others.” In the fabliau of the “Chevalier au Barizel,” we are told of a great baron who issued continually from his strong castle to plunder the country around. “He watched so closely the roads, that he slew all the pilgrims, and plundered the merchants; many of them he brought to mishap. He spared neither clergy nor monk, recluse, hermit, or canon; and the nuns and lay-sisters he caused to live in open shame, when he had them in his power; and he spared neither dames nor maids, of whatever rank or class, whether poor or rich, or well educated or simple, but he put them all to open shame” (Barbazan, i. 209).

The roads, in the middle ages, appear also to have been infested with beggars of all descriptions, many of whom were cripples, and persons mutilated in the most revolting manner, the result of feudal wantonness, and of feudal vengeance. Our cut No. 220, also furnished by a manuscript of the fourteenth century, represents a very deformed cripple, whose means of locomotion are rather curious. The beggar and the cripple, too, were often only robbers in disguise, who waited their opportunity to attack single passengers, or who watched to give notice to comrades of the approach of richer convoys. The mediæval popular stories give abundant instances of robbers and others disguising themselves as beggars and cripples. Blindness, also, was common among these objects of commiseration in the middle ages; often, as in the case of mutilation of other kinds, the result of deliberate violence. The same manuscript I have so often quoted (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), has furnished our cut No. 221, representing a blind man and his dog.

It will be easily understood, that when travelling was beset with so many inconveniences, private hospitality would be looked upon as one of the first of virtues, for people were often obliged to have recourse to it, and it was seldom refused. In the country every man’s door was open to the stranger who came from a distance, unless his appearance were suspicious or threatening. In this there was a mutual advantage; for the guest generally brought with him news and information which was highly valued at a time when communication between one place and another was so slow and uncertain. Hence the first questions put to a stranger were, whence he had come, and what news he had brought with him. The old romances and tales furnish us with an abundance of examples of the widespread feeling of hospitality that prevailed during the middle ages. Even in the middle and lower classes, people were always ready to share their meals with the stranger who asked for a lodging. The denial of such hospitality was looked upon as exceptional and disgraceful, and was only met with from misers and others who were regarded as almost without the pale of society. The early metrical story of “The Hermit,” the foundation of Parnell’s poem, gives us examples of the different sorts of hospitality with which travellers met. The hermit and his companion began their travels in a wild country, and at the end of their first day’s journey, they were obliged to take up their lodgings with another hermit, who gave them the best welcome he could, and shared his provisions with them. The next evening they came to a city, where everybody shut his door against them, because they were poor, till at length, weary and wet with rain, they sat down on the stone steps of a great mansion; but the host was an usurer, and refused to receive into his house men who promised him so little profit. Yet at length, to escape their importunities, he allowed them to enter the yard, and sleep under a staircase, where his maid threw them some straw to lie upon, but neither offered them refreshment, except some of the refuse of the table, nor allowed them to go to a fire to dry their clothes. The next evening they sought their lodging in a large abbey, where the monks received them with great hospitality, and gave them plenty to eat and drink. On the fourth day they came to another town, where they went to the house of a rich and honest burgher, who also received them with all the marks of hospitality. Their host washed their feet, and gave them plenty to eat and drink, and they were comfortably lodged for the night.

It would not be difficult to illustrate all the incidents of this story by anecdotes of mediæval life. The traveller who sought a lodging, without money to pay for it, even in private houses, was not always well received. In the fabliau of the “Butcher of Abbeville” (Barbazan, iv. 1), the butcher, returning from the market of Oisemont, is overtaken by night at the small town of Bailleuil. He determined to stop for the night there, and, seeing a poor woman at her door, at the entrance of the town, he inquired where he could ask for a night’s lodging, and she recommended him to the priest, as the only person in the town who had wine in his cellar. The butcher accordingly repaired to the priest’s house, where he found that ecclesiastic sitting on the sill of his door, and asked him to give him a lodging for the sake of charity. The priest, who thought that there was nothing to be gained from him, refused, telling him he would find plenty of people in the town who could give him a bed. As the butcher was leaving the town, irritated by his inhospitable reception, he encountered a flock of sheep, which he learnt were the property of the priest; whereupon, selecting the fattest of them, he dextrously stole it away unperceived, and, returning with it into the town, he went to the priest’s door, found him just closing his house, for it was nightfall, and again asked him for lodging. The priest asked him who he was, and whence he came. He replied that he had been to the market at Oisemont, and bought a sheep; that he was overtaken by night, and sought a lodging; and that, as it was no great consideration to him, he intended to kill his sheep, and share it with his host. The temptation was too great for the greedy priest, and he now received the butcher into his house, treated him with great respect, and had a bed made for him in his hall. Now the priest had--as was common with the Catholic priesthood--a concubine and a maid-servant, and they all regaled themselves on the butcher’s sheep. Before the guest left next morning, he contrived to sell the sheep’s skin and wool for certain considerations severally to the concubine and to the maid, and, after his departure, their rival claims led to a quarrel, and even to a battle. While the priest, on his return from the service of matins, was labouring to appease the combatants, his shepherd entered, with the information that his best sheep had been stolen from his flock, and an examination of the skin led to the discovery of the trick which had been played upon him--a punishment, as we are told, which he well merited by his inhospitable conduct. A Latin story of the thirteenth century may be coupled with the foregoing anecdote. There was an abbot who was very miserly and inhospitable, and he took care to give all the offices in the abbey to men of his own character. This was especially the case with the monk who had the direction of the _hospitium_, or guest-house. One day came a minstrel to ask for a lodging, but he met with an unfriendly reception, was treated only with black bread and water to drink, and was shown to a hard bed of straw. Minstrels were not usually treated in this inhospitable manner, and our guest resolved to be revenged. He left the abbey next morning, and a little way on his journey he met the abbot, who was returning home from a short absence. “God bless you, good abbot!” he said, “for the noble hospitality which has been shown to me this night by your monks. The master of your guest-house treated me with the choicest wines, and placed rich dishes on the table for me in such numbers, that I would not attempt to count them; and when I came away this morning, he gave me a pair of shoes, a girdle, and a knife.” The abbot hurried home in a furious rage, summoned the offending brother before a chapter, accused him of squandering away the property of the monastery, caused him to be flogged and dismissed from his office, and appointed in his place another, in whose inhospitable temper he could place entire confidence.

These cases of want of hospitality were, however, exceptions to the general rule. A stranger was usually received with great kindness, each class of society, of course, more or less by its own class, though, under such circumstances, much less distinction of class was made than we might suppose. The aristocratic class, which included what we should now call the gentry, sought hospitality in the nearest castle; for a castle, as a matter of pride and ostentation, was, more or less, like an abbey, a place of hospitality for everybody. Among the richer and more refined classes, great care was taken to show proper courtesy to strangers, according to their rank. In the case of a knight, the lord of the house and his lady, with their damsels, led him into a private room, took off his armour, and often his clothes, and gave him a change of apparel, after careful ablution. A scene of this kind is represented in the accompanying cut (No. 222), taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Lancelot,” of the fourteenth century, in the National Library in Paris (No. 6956). The host or his lady sometimes washed the stranger’s feet themselves. Thus, in the fabliau quoted above, when the hermit and his companion sought a lodging at the house of a _bourgeois_, they were received without question, and their hosts washed their feet, and then gave them plenty to eat and drink, and a bed:--

_Li hoste orent leur piez lavez,_
_Bien sont peu et abreviez;_
_Jusqu’ au jor à ese se jurent._

We might easily multiply extracts illustrative of this hospitable feeling, as it existed and was practised from the twelfth century to the fifteenth. Our cut No. 223, taken from a manuscript of the earlier part of the fourteenth century (MS. Harl. No. 1527), is another representation of the reception of a stranger in this hospitable manner. In the “Roman de la Violette” (p. 233), when its hero, Gerard, sought a lodging at a castle, he was received with the greatest hospitality; the lord of the castle led him into the great hall, and there disarmed him, furnished him with a rich mantle, and caused him to be bathed and washed. In the same romance (p. 237), when Gerard arrives at the little town of Mouzon, he goes to the house of a widow to ask for a night’s lodging, and is received with the same welcome. His horse is taken into a stable, and carefully attended to, while the lady labours to keep him in conversation until supper is ready, after which a good bed is made for him, and they all retire to rest. The comforts, however, which could be offered to the visitor, consisted often chiefly in eating and drinking. People had few spare chambers, especially furnished ones, and, in the simplicity of mediæval manners, the guests were obliged to sleep either in the same room as the family, or, more usually, in the hall, where beds were made for them on the floor or on the benches. “Making a bed” was a phrase true in its literal sense, and the bed made consisted still of a heap of straw, with a sheet or two thrown over it. The host, indeed, could often furnish no more than a room of bare walls and floor as a protection from the weather, and the guest had to rely as much upon his own resources for his personal comforts, as if he had had to pass the night in the midst of a wild wood. Moreover the guests, however numerous and though strangers to each other, were commonly obliged to sleep together indiscriminately in the same room.

The old Anglo-Saxon feeling, that the duration of the chance visit of a stranger should be limited to the third day, seems still to have prevailed. A Latin rhyme, printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ” (i. 91), tells us,--

_Verum dixit anus, quod piscis olet triduanus;_
_Ejus de more simili fætet hospes odore._

In towns the hospitality of the burghers was not always given gratis, for it was a common custom, even among the richer merchants, to make a profit by receiving guests. These letters of lodgings were distinguished from the inn-keepers, or _hostelers_, by the title of _herbergeors_, or people who gave harbour to strangers, and in the larger towns they were submitted to municipal regulations. The great barons and knights were in the custom of taking up their lodgings with these herbergeors, rather than going to the public hostels; and thus a sort of relationship was formed between particular nobles or kings and particular burghers, on the strength of which the latter adopted the arms of their habitual lodgers as their signs. These herbergeors practised great extortions upon their accidental guests, and they appear to have adopted various artifices to allure them to their houses. These extortions are the subject of a very curious Latin poem of the thirteenth century, entitled “Peregrinus” (the Traveller), the author of which describes the arts employed to allure the traveller, and the extortions to which he was subjected. It appears that persons were employed to look out for the arrival of strangers, and that they entered into conversation with them, pretended to discover that they came from the same part of the country, and then, as taking especial interest in their fellow-countrymen, recommended them to lodgings. These tricks of the burghers who let their lodgings for hire are alluded to in other mediæval writers. It appears, also, that both in these lodging-houses and in the public inns, it was not an unusual practice to draw people into contracting heavy bills, which they had not the money to pay, and then to seize their baggage and even their clothes, to several times the amount of the debt.

Our cut No. 224, taken from an illumination in the unique manuscript of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (fifteenth century), in the Hunterian Library at Glasgow, represents the exterior and the interior of a public hostel or inn. Without, we see the sign, and the bush suspended to it, and a company of travellers arriving; within, the bed-chambers are represented, and they illustrate not only the practice of lodging a number of persons in the same bedroom, but also that of sleeping in a state of perfect nudity. Our next cut (No. 225) is a picture of a mediæval tapster; it is taken from one of the carved seats, or misereres, in the fine parish church of Ludlow, in Shropshire. It will, probably, be remarked that the size of the tapster’s jug is rather disproportionate to that of his barrel; but mediæval artists often set perspective and relative proportions at defiance.

The tavern in the middle ages seems to have been the usual scene of a large portion of the ordinary life of the lower class of society, and even partially of the middle class, and its influence was certainly very injurious on the manners and character of the people. Even the women, as we learn from a number of contemporary songs and stories, spent much of their time drinking and gossiping in taverns, where great latitude was afforded for carrying on low intrigues. The tavern was, in fact, the general rendezvous of those who sought amusement, of whatever kind. In the “Milleres Tale,” in Chaucer, Absolon, “that joly was and gay,” and who excelled as a musician, frequented the taverns and “brewhouses,” meaning apparently the lesser public-houses where they only sold ale, to exhibit his skill--

_In al the toun nas brewhous ne taverne_
_That he ne visited with his solas,_
_Ther as that any gaylard tapster was._
--Cant. Tales, l. 3,334.

And Chaucer’s friar was well acquainted with all the taverns in the towns he visited--

_He knew wel the tavernes in every toun,_
_And every osteller or gay tapstere._
--Ibid., l. 240.

The tavern was especially the haunt of gamblers, who were encouraged by the “tapster,” because they brought him his most profitable customers. As I have said before, when his customers had no money, the taverner took their articles of dress for payment, and in doing this he added the profits of the money-lender to those of the taverner. In the fabliau of “Gautier d’Aupais,” the young prodigal Gautier, hungry and penniless, arrives towards evening at a tavern, where he finds a number of guests enjoying themselves. His horse is taken to the stable, and he joins the guests, but when the moment comes for paying, and the taverner demands three sols, he is induced in his desperation to try his luck at the dice. Instead, however, of retrieving his fortunes, he loses his horse and his robe, and is obliged to return to his father’s house on foot, and in his shirt--

_Si a perdu sa robe et son corant destrier;_
_En pure sa chemise l’en convint reperier._

The story of Cortois d’Arras, in the fabliau in “Barbazan” (i. 355), is somewhat similar. Young Cortois, also a prodigal, obtains from his father a large sum of money as a compensation for all his claims on the paternal property, and with this throws himself upon the world. As he proceeded, he heard the tavern-boy calling out from the door, “Here is good wine of Soissons, acceptable to everybody! here credit is given to everybody, and no pledges taken!” with much more in the same style. Cortois determined to stop at the tavern. “Host,” said he, “how much do you sell your wine the septier (a measure of two gallons)? and when was it tapped?” He was told that it had been fresh tapped that morning, and that the price was six deniers. The host then goes on to display his accommodations. “Within are all sorts of comforts; painted chambers, and soft beds, raised high with white straw, and made soft with feathers; here within is hostel for love affairs, and when bed-time comes you will have pillows of violets to hold your head more softly; and, finally, you will have electuaries and rose-water, to wash your mouth and your face.” Cortois orders a gallon of wine, and immediately afterwards a _belle demoiselle_ makes her appearance, for such were in these times reckoned among the attractions of the tavern. It is soon arranged between the lady and the landlord that she is to be Cortois’ chamber-companion, and they all begin drinking together, the taverner persuading his guest that he owes this choice wine to the lady’s love. They then go to carouse in the garden, and they finish by plundering him of his money, and he is obliged to leave his clothes in pledge for the payment of his tavern expenses. The ale-wife was especially looked upon as a model of extortion and deceit, for she cheated unblushingly, both in money and measure, and she is pointed out in popular literature as an object of hatred and of satire. Our cut No. 226, also furnished by one of the carved misereres in Ludlow Church, represents a scene from Doomsday: a demon is bearing away the deceitful ale-wife, who carries nothing with her but her gay head-dress and her false measure; he is going to throw her into “hell-mouth,” while another demon is reading her offences as entered in his roll, and a third is playing on the bagpipes, by way of welcome.