The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only) Read online

  Other warlike skills practised by young men were fighting with the broad-sword; cudgelling, in which victory was obtained when blood poured down the opponent’s scalp; quarter-staff which was played, or rather fought, with poles over six feet long held firmly in the middle by one hand and loosely by the other between the middle and the end, at, in fact, the quarter-mark. The object of this exercise was merely to knock the opponent over, preferably senseless, unlike single-stick which, as with cudgelling, was ended by the drawing of blood.

  Wrestling was a universally popular pastime, both with rich and poor, although, as Touchstone said, it was not considered a suitable spectacle for ladies. The rules, when observed at all, varied in different parts of the country. In some counties certain holds and throws were disallowed; in others there were no holds barred; in Devon wrestlers were permitted to wear heavy soles to their shoes with which they delivered vicious kicks to their opponents. In London wrestling was given official encouragement by the lord mayor who presided over annual matches on St Bartholomew’s Day, a practice of ‘old time’, said Stow. The victors were rewarded by bags of money thrown to them by the lord mayor and aldermen in a large tent erected at Clerkenwell. ‘And after this,’ another chronicler relates, ‘a parcel of wild rabbits are turned loose in the crowd and are hunted by boys with great noise, at which the mayor and aldermen do much besport themselves.’12

  In FitzStephen’s twelfth-century account of Londoners amusing themselves, they are described watching cockfights, playing football, practising ‘feates of warre’ with ‘disarmed launces and shields’, casting stones, dancing, leaping, going out into the fields ‘on warlike horses’. ‘The girls, as the moon rises, dance to the stringed instrument. In the winter before dinner … there are boar fights, or tusked pigs or bulls and large bears are baited with dogs.’ And in all seasons there were riders to be seen tilting at the quintain, galloping towards a wooden figure on a pivot and attempting to strike it on the spot which would ensure that the figure did not quickly swivel round and hit the horsemen on the back with its sword. A variety of this game was played upon the river.

  A shield is hanged on a pole, in the middle of the stream [John Stow explained in a résumé of FitzStephen’s account]. A boat is prepared without oares to bee carried by the violence of the water, and in the fore part thereof standeth a young man readie to give charge upon the shield with his launce; if so be hee breaketh his launce against the shield, and doth not fall, he is thought to have performed a worthy deed. If so be without breaking his launce he runneth strongly against the shield, downe he falleth into the water, for the boat is violently forced with the tide; but on each side stand great numbers to see, and laugh thereat … In the holy dayes all the Somer … the Maidens trip in their Timbrels, and daunce as long as they can see …

  When the great fenne or Moore, which watreth the walls of the Citie on the north-side [Moorfields] is frozen, many young men plye upon the yce; some, striding as wide as they may, do slide swiftly … Some tie bones to their feete, and under their heeles, and shoving themselves by a little picked staffe, doe slide as swiftly as a bird flieth in the ayre, or an arrow out of a Crossbowe.13

  Beyond the walls of most manor houses were orchards and fishponds, complete perhaps with fish-house and curing furnace, and, sheltered by the walls from the winds, there grew not only the herbs which were such essential ingredients of medieval cookery, but also flowers. Ideally, so Alexander Neckham wrote in his De Naturis Rerum towards the beginning of the thirteenth century:

  The garden should be adorned with roses and lilies, the turnsole or heliotrope, violets, and mandrake, there you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savery, hysop, mint, rue, ditanny, smallage, pellitory, lettuce, garden cress, and peonies. There should also be beds planted with onions, leeks, garlic, pumpkins, and shallots. The cucumber, the poppy, the daffodil, and brank-ursine ought to be in a good garden. There should also be pottage herbs, such as beets, herb mercury, orach, sorrel, and mallows.

  There should also, he added, be a good supply of medicinal herbs including borage and purslane, hazelwort, colewort and ragwort, valerian and myrtle, thyme and saffron. Recent archaeological work, corroborating and extending the evidence of the records, has shown that a large variety of plants and fruits were, indeed, grown in gardens. In addition to those already named, goosefoot and sorrel were grown, penny-cress and whortleberry, borage, black mustard and, for use as a laxative, corncockle, as well as strawberries and blackberries, sloes, plums and raspberries. In the nearby orchard grew apples, plums and pears, cherries and quinces.14

  Contented as they might have been in the contemplation of their gardens and orchards, most members of the upper classes found their greatest pleasure in the chase. They spent day after day between 24 June and 14 September and from 10 November to 2 February hunting deer; they also hunted wild boar and foxes with packs of wolf-hounds, mastiffs, greyhounds, terriers and beagles, riding with swords, with bows and arrows and with spears. They brought down pheasants and partridges with hawks; netted smaller birds such as larks, as well as badgers; snared rabbits; coursed hares. Women as well as men joined in the sport. In the early fourteenth-century manuscript known as the Taymouth Horae there are several pictures of ladies hawking and hunting, sticking boars, cutting up stags, blowing the mort on a horn as the slaughtered stag’s head is displayed on the point of a spear. Even nuns enjoyed hunting. The Bishop of Winchester had to order the abbesses of the three principal nunneries in his diocese to get rid of their hunting dogs which were consuming food that should have been given to the poor and which, defiling both church and cloister, ‘frequently troubled’ divine service with ‘their inordinate noise’.15

  The nobles’ passion for hunting and hawking was severely criticized by some clerics. In the middle of the twelfth century John of Salisbury said that the sports made them as brutal as the beasts they chased, that peasants were evicted for the sake of the beasts, and that if a great and merciless hunter passed your home you were obliged to find for him and his party all the refreshment possible. Otherwise you might be ruined or even accused of treason.16

  Yet clerical condemnation had not the slightest effect on the hunter’s pleasure. In The Master of Game, the oldest book on hunting in English, written at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Edward, second Duke of York, cousin of Henry V, undertook ‘to prove how hunters live in this world more joyfully than any other men’:

  For when the hunter riseth in the morning, and he sees a sweet and fair morn and clear weather and bright, and he heareth the song of the small birds, the which sing so sweetly with great melody and full of love, each in its own language in the best wise … and when the sun is arisen, he shall see fresh dew upon the small twigs and grasses, and the sun by his virtue shall make them shine. And that is great joy and liking to the hunter’s heart. After when he shall go to his quest or searching, he shall see or meet anon with the hart without great seeking, and shall harbour [trace to the lair] him well and readily within a little compass. It is great joy and liking to the hunter … And when he has come home he shall doff his clothes and his shoes and his hose, and he shall wash his thighs and his legs, and per ad venture all his body. And in the meanwhile he shall order well his supper, with the neck of the hart and of other good meats, and good wine or ale. And then he shall go and drink and lie in his bed in fair fresh clothes, and shall sleep well and steadfastly all the night without any evil thoughts of any sins, wherefore I say that hunters go into Paradise when they die, and live in this world more joyfully than any other man.17

  Hunting was not for the poor. Good greyhounds were extremely expensive; a goshawk could cost £5; and a female peregrine, the most prized of all hunting birds, even more. They were fed most extravagantly, King John’s being given doves, pork and chicken once a week; and they were taken into the dining-hall as well as being provided with perches in their masters’ bedrooms. The Abbot of Westminster, Nicholas Litlington, thought so h
ighly of his falcon that he paid for a waxen image of it to be bought for the abbey altar when it was ill.18

  A statute of Edward III issued in 1360 decreed that anyone finding a hawk must immediately hand it over to the sheriff of the county who was to proclaim the discovery in all the towns for which he was responsible. ‘And if any man take such Hawk,’ the statute continued, ‘and the same conceal from the Lord whose it was, or from his Falconers … shall have Imprisonment of Two Years, and yield to the Lord the price of the Hawk so concealed and carried away, if he have whereof; and, if not, he shall the longer abide in prison.19

  Giraldus Cambrensis records a story which well illustrates the excitement of hawking, and the occasional victory of the quarry:

  King Henry the Second of England (or his son Richard, I name both, but shun to distinguish clearly since my tale is to his dishonour) in the early days of his reign cast off his best falcon at a heron, for the sake of that cruel pastime. The heron circled higher and higher; but the falcon being swifter, and already wellnigh overtaken him, when the king felt certain of victory and cried aloud, ‘By God’s eyes or His Gorge … that bird shall not now escape, even though God Himself had sworn it!’ (for they had learned thus to swear in their youthful insolence; and such habits may scarce be unlearnt; even as Henry II.’s grandfather Henry I., was wont to swear By God’s Death.) At these words the heron turned forthwith to bay; and, by a most miraculous change from victim to tormentor, stuck his beak into the falcon’s head, dashed out his brains, and (himself whole and unhurt) cast the dying bird to the earth at the King’s very feet.20

  6 Wayfarers and Pilgrims

  A long journey in medieval England was never undertaken lightly, although the roads were not as bad as has sometimes been maintained, and, as the maps of Matthew Paris show, a network of highways did exist. It had been accepted in Norman times that a road should be wide enough for two wagons to pass each other, for sixteen knights to ride abreast, or for two oxherds to touch together the tips of their goads.1 And on most stretches of the main roads which led out of London this width seems to have been maintained, then and thereafter. But on minor roads constant encroachments caused maddening bottlenecks, while the surfaces were repeatedly falling into ruinous disrepair either through neglect or through wilful destruction. In 1286, for example, the people of Cambridge were prosecuted for ploughing up the road to Hinton.2 Packhorse routes were notoriously difficult. Although often paved in boggy terrain, and then known as ‘causeys’, a corruption of the Latin for trodden, they were usually so narrow that two trains of horses could not pass each other and after long arguments one or other of them would have to give way and move down into the mud.3

  Foul weather, snow and floods were likely to close any road in winter when the very track itself was difficult to discern, even though large stones often marked the verges in desolate country. In the winter of 1324–5 a man from Nottingham, travelling on the king’s business in the eastern counties, managed to cover only six miles a day, though he usually covered over twenty-five; and in 1339 Parliament had to be adjourned because those who were due to attend it were prevented by bad weather and impassable roads from doing so.

  The condition of roads in the towns in winter was frequently scarcely better than that of those in the country, as the number of prosecutions for blocking or polluting highways indicate. Citizens were repeatedly fined for letting pigs run wild, leaving dung heaps in the road, butchering animals there, blocking the gutters with rubbish. The Norwich Leet Rolls for 1390–91 are replete with records of fines imposed for such offences:

  Isabella Lucas has and maintains a foul gutter running from her messuage into the King’s highway … Fined 6d … Wm Gerard has had a horse lying for a long time in the King’s highway, near the church of St Michael de Colegate to the abominable offence and poisoning [of the air]… Fined 12d … The churchwardens of St Martyn’s of the Bale for noyeing the King’s highway with muck and compost [are] fined 3d.4

  At Norwich, as in other towns, citizens were obliged to maintain the stretch of road outside their own doors, while tolls were charged on goods coming into the town from outside to pay for the repair of other stretches. The tollgate would be set up some distance from the town gate to prevent strangers skirting the town if their business did not oblige them to enter it; a token would be given in exchange for the toll paid; and the token handed over to the keeper of the town gate. But the tolls rarely realized enough money for the amount of work that was required. And town authorities frequently had to petition Parliament for powers to compel citizens to fulfil neglected obligations, as the stewards and bailiffs of Gloucester did in 1473 when they had cause to complain that the citizens’ dereliction had left their town ‘feebly paved and full perilous and jeopardous’.5 Occasionally the king intervened. Edward III did so in 1352 when he ordered those citizens who lived beside the notoriously ill-kept road from Westminster to Temple Bar to improve it by digging a ditch, raising a pavement seven feet wide and making a paved roadway. Even so, a few years later this road was in as parlous a condition as ever.

  The streets of London were quite as bad as those elsewhere. In the middle of the fourteenth century it was claimed that ‘the highway between Temple-bar and Westminster [was] rendered so deep and miry by the carts and horses carrying merchandise … that it was dangerous to pass upon it’.6 It was also claimed that

  all the folk who bring victuals and wares by carts and horses to the City do make grievous complaint that they incur great damage and are oftentimes in peril of losing what they bring, and sometimes do lose it, because the roads without the City are so torn up and the pavement so broken as may be seen by all persons.7

  It was to be many years before the state of England’s roads improved. In the middle of the sixteenth century those in London were described in a preamble to an Act as being ‘very foul and full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and noyous as well for all the King’s subjects on horseback as well as on foot and with carriages’;8 while in Yorkshire the conveyance of lead from the roof of Jervaulx Abbey had to be postponed until the summer months because, ‘the ways in that countrie are so foule and deep that no carriage can pass in winter’.9 As late as the time of Henry VIII the roads of the country were still ‘full of great Paynes, Perils and Jeopardie’.10

  The trouble was that, although the maintenance of roads and bridges was deemed a service for which the whole nation was responsible, and although the Statute of Winchester of 1285 placed an obligation upon all landowners to maintain the highways passing through their manors – upon which they could charge strangers tolls for using them – roadmending was an irksome duty and tolls, when authorized and collected, were used by the less conscientious landowners for other purposes. Even the queen of Edward III, who had been granted the revenues of London Bridge by the king, appropriated them all to herself, neglecting to repair the structure which became so ruinous that collectors had to be sent all over the country to raise donations for its reconstruction. At the same time the clergy had to be enjoined to address their congregations with ‘pious exhortations’ on the bridge’s behalf.11

  The repair of roads and bridges for the benefit of travellers was, indeed, considered a pious duty. ‘It is meritorious to mend dangerous roads and perilous bridges,’ the local people were reminded when a bridge over the Trent was in urgent need of attention. After all, the Latin word for priest, pontifex, meant bridge-builder. Bishops granted indulgences to those who contributed to rebuilding funds, as witness the Bishop of Durham in 1394:

  Whereas the bridge at Chollerford, as we hear, is decayed by the inundation of the waters … and now wants repair, whereby the inhabitants in the neighbourhood are in great want. We, therefore, confiding in the mercy of almighty God, and the sufferings of His Holy Mother, and all the Saints, do release unto all our parishioners … thirteen days of their enjoined penance, upon condition they lend a helping hand to the repairing of the said bridge, or contribute their pious charity thereto.12

>   Devout testators left money in their wills for the mending of bridges and specified stretches of highway, an example followed by Henry VII who bequeathed £2000 for ‘the repair of the highways and bridges from Windsor to Richmond Manor and thence to St George’s church beside Southwark and thence to Greenwich manor and thence to Canterbury’.13 Hermits, whose huts were often to be seen by fords and whose blessings were valued by devout wayfarers, sometimes took over the care of roads and bridges as a religious duty, and were occasionally authorized to collect charges for doing so. William Philippe, a hermit who lived to the north of London, was officially permitted by Edward III to collect tolls ‘from our people passing between Heghgate and Smethfelde’ to pay for the repair of the Hollow Way.14 The abbots of monasteries, too, considered it a holy duty to care for the roads that passed by their houses. ‘Such abbeys as were near the danger of seabanks,’ wrote Roger Aske in the sixteenth century, ‘were great maintainers of sea-walls and dykes, maintainers and builders of bridges and highways and such other things for the commonwealth.’15

  Many bridges, built at first of oak and later of stone, had chapels attached to them. Among these were London Bridge, whose large chapel built over the middle pier was dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, and ‘the faire bridge of stone of nine arches’ at Wakefield, under which, in the words of the antiquary John Leland, ‘runneth the river of Calder; and on the east side of this bridge is a right goodly chapel of Our Lady and two cantuarie preestes founded in it’.

  In many cases both chapel and bridge were beneficiaries under wills and in receipt of regular income from rents in the towns which they served. Yet these bequests served to keep few of them in good condition. Many, indeed, were in the ruinous state of the bridge over the Trent at Heybethebridge near Nottingham ‘to the making and repair of which’, as Parliament was informed in 1376, ‘Nobody is bound and alms only are collected … so that oftentimes several persons have been drowned, as well horsemen as carts, man, and harness.’16 The sad history of the bridge over the Tweed, one of the longest bridges in the country, was not exceptional. This bridge is first known to have collapsed during the floods of 1199. It was subsequently rebuilt on several occasions, sometimes in wood, at others in stone; but no structure stood for long; and in 1294, after a devastating inundation, a ferry guarded by cross-bowmen had to be established. Half a century later, after a toll of sixpence had been collected from every ship entering the harbour, a new bridge was constructed, ‘but not in such a way as not to fall again, which has since happened to it many times’.17