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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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_.

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.

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.

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.

Among the aristocracy of the land, the education of the boy took what was considered at that time a very practical turn--he was instructed in behaviour, in manly exercises and the use of arms, in carving at table--then looked upon as a most important accomplishment among gentlemen--and in some other branches of learning which we should hardly appreciate at present; but school learning was no mediæval gentleman’s accomplishment, and was, in that light, quite an exception, unless perhaps to a certain degree among the ladies. In the historical romances of the middle ages, a prince or a baron is sometimes able to read, but it is the result of accidental circumstances. Thus, in the romance of the “Mort de Garin,” when the empress of the Franks writes secret news from Paris to duke Garin, the head of the family of the Loherains, it is remarked, as an unusual circumstance, that the latter was able to read, and that he could thus communicate the secret information of the empress to his friends without the assistance of a scholar or secretary, which was a great advantage, as it prevented one source of danger of the betrayal of the correspondence. “Garin the Loherain,” says the narrator, “was acquainted with letters, for in his infancy he was put to school until he had learned both Roman (French) and Latin.”

_De letres sot li Loherens Garins;_
_Car en s’enfance fu à escole mis,_
_Tant que il sot et Roman et Latin._
--Mort de Garin, p. 105.

Education of this kind was bestowed more generally on the _bourgeoisie_--on the middle and even the lower classes; and to these school-education was much more generally accessible than we are accustomed to imagine. From Anglo-Saxon times, indeed, every parish church had been a public school. The Ecclesiastical Institutes (p. 475, in the folio edition of the Laws, by Thorpe) directs that “Mass-priests ought always to have at their houses a school of disciples; and if any one desire to commit his little ones (_lytlingas_) to them for instruction, they ought very gladly to receive them, and kindly teach them.” It is added that “they ought not, however, for that instruction, to desire anything from their relatives, except what they shall be willing to do for them of their own accord.” In the Ecclesiastical Canons, published under king Edgar, there is an enactment which would lead us to suppose that the clergy performed their scholastic duties with some zeal, and that priests were in the habit of seducing their scholars from each other, for this enactment (p. 396) enjoins “that no priest receive another’s scholar without leave of him whom he previously followed.” This system of teaching was kept up during at least several generations after the Norman conquest.