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_).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.