The poor little hare and a fox or two, alone are left us of all these original tenants of the soil; and game laws were, even in those days of plentifulsupply, found needful to preserve the aborigines of the woods as their especial property, by the great ones of the land, and when manslaughter was to be atoned for by a fine of money, the death of a head of deer was punishable by the forfeiture of the offender’s eyes, and a second instance by death. Who will dispute the aristocratic lineage of the game laws, with such facts of history before them? Hunting had its proper seasons; the wolf and fox might be hunted from Christmas-day to the Annunciation, the roebuck from Easter to Michaelmas, the roe from Michaelmas to Candlemas, the hare from Michaelmas to Midsummer, the boar from the Nativity to the day of the “Presentation in the Temple.”
The clergy were not behind-hand in partaking of the privileges of the chase within their own demesnes, and they took care generally to have good receptacles for game in their parks and enclosures. At the time of the Reformation, the see of Norwich had no less than thirteen parks well stocked with deer; and the name of one of the city churches, St. Peter’s, Hungate, is derived from theHound’s-gate, where the bishop’s hounds were stabled.
Hawking was a sport, until the magna charta, exclusively confined to the nobility; lords and ladies alike indulged themselves in the exercise, which from its gentleness, in comparison with others then in vogue, was deemed somewhat an effeminate pastime,probably because, in the delicate dexterity it required, the ladies bore off the palm of victory.
A hawk’s eyrie was returned in doomsday-book as one of the most valuable articles of property; and the estimation in which the bird was held, may be judged of by the enormous prices given for them, and the heavy penalties attached to stealing either them or their eggs; for destroying one of which the offender was liable to imprisonment for a twelvemonth and a day. Perhaps, however, this is no very safe criterion of their intrinsic value, or those sentences that sometimes figure in our modern assize reports—where seven years’ transportation for stealing two ducks from an open pond, stands side by side with twelve months’ imprisonment for murdering a wife, a friend, or a child, in a fit of temporary insanity, alias intoxication—might lead to rather curious inferences.
But to return to our hawks; a thousand pounds for a cast of these birds, and a hundred marks for a single one, are recorded prices. In hawking, the bird was carried on the wrist, which was protected by a thick glove, the head of the bird covered with a hood, and its feet secured to the wrist by straps of leather, called jesses, and to its legs were fastened small bells, toned according to the musical scale.
Among the chronicles of old monkish writers priorto the Conquest, is a story accounting for the first advent of the Danes upon our shores, as connected with the amusement of hawking: “A Danish chieftain of high rank, named Lothbroc, amusing himself with hawking near the sea, upon the western shores of Denmark, the bird in pursuit of her game fell into the water; Lothbroc, anxious for her safety, got into a little boat that was near at hand, and rowed from the shore to take her up; but before he could return to land, a sudden storm arose, and he was driven out to sea. After suffering great hardships, during a voyage of infinite peril, he reached the coast of Norfolk, and landed at a port called Reedham, (now a small village on the railway line from London to Yarmouth,) where he was immediately seized by the inhabitants, and sent to the court of Edmund, King of the East Angles, who received him favourably, and soon became strongly attached to him for his skill in training and flying hawks. The partiality shown to the foreigner excited the jealousy of Beoric, the king’s falconer, who took an opportunity of murdering the Dane whilst he was exercising his birds in a small wood, where he secreted the body. The vigilance of a favourite spaniel discovered the deed. Beoric was apprehended and convicted of the murder, and condemned to be put in an open boat, without sails, oars, or rudder, and abandoned to the mercy ofthe winds and wares. It so chanced that the boat was wafted to the very point of land that Lothbroc came from; and Beoric was apprehended by the Danes, and taken before their two chieftains, Hinguer and Hubba, the sons of Lothbroc, to whom the crafty falconer made a statement as ingenious as false, wherein he affirmed that their father had been murdered by Edmund, and himself sent adrift for opposing the deed. Irritated by the falsehood, the Danes invaded the kingdom of the East Angles, pillaged their country, took their king prisoner, tied him to a stake, and shot him to death with arrows.” Lidgate, a monk of St. Edmund’s at Bury, has given this legend a place in his poetical life of the tutelary saint of his monastery, but it bears upon it every mark of a legendary tale, and the fact is well known that Danish pirates had infested the shores long prior to the date assigned to the events narrated in it.
The office of “queen’s falconer” yet exists, and it is written in a certain little black book, that the duties attached to it, however imaginary, receive substantial acknowledgement from the public purse in the form of an annual stipend of no mean amount. Another recreation peculiarly associated with the memory of knights and dames once tenanting the feudal castle is the tournament, the site of whose gorgeous pageantries yet bears the title of the “Gilden croft,”though the lustre of the name is the only ray of splendour bequeathed to it as an inheritance of glory. Centuries have witnessed the mutations of the properties of the great ones of the land, as they have gradually passed down through the various gradations of society like cast-off garments, until the once brilliant lists of the gay tournament have changed to long tiers of poverty tenanted “right ups;” the music of the herald’s trumpet has been replaced by the rattle of the shuttle and the loom; and the steel-clad knights and esquires, with their tiltings and joustings, amid the smiles and favours of youth and beauty, have given place to the struggles of the weaver and the winder in their weary battle of life, for the guerdon of daily bread. Where, Edward and Phillippa held their Easter tournament, and their gallant son, the brave Black Prince, displayed his knightly prowess amid splendours that might rival the “field of the cloth of gold,” poverty, hard labour, and penury now rear their gaunt limbs; and the tale of the “Paramatta weaver” is breathed forth to the listening ear of humanity from its precincts.
But the tournament demands attention, inwrought as it is with every conception we may form of the days of chivalry; and, thanks to the patient researches of many chroniclers, we have not much difficulty in learning all we may desire to know concerning these glories of an age gone by. Fiction has givenlife and vigour to these features of past history. Ivanhoe lives and breathes before us at the mention of a tournament, and plain prose facts may not vie with the glowing pictures, painted with imagination’s rainbow hues. The tournament was not altogether the play-ground of full-grown knights and esquires, as romance would sometimes tend to show it;—it was the theatre on which many an important drama of life was played; it was a grand field for introduction into military life, then the only life deemed worthy the ambition of a gentleman; and the laws and regulations to which all who presented themselves as candidates for honours became subject, bespeak the importance attached to the favours it conferred.
The mode of conducting a tournament was established by law. It was preceded always by a proclamation; one worded thus, is given by Strutt: “Be it known unto you, lords, knights, and esquires, ladies and gentlewomen,” (they did not in those days of chivalry commence ladies, my lords and gentlemen) “you are hereby acquainted, that a superb achievement in arms, and a grand and noble tournament, will be held in the parade of Clarencieux king at arms, on the part of the most noble baron, lord of I. C. B., and on the part of the most noble baron the lord of C. B. D., in the parade of Norreys king at arms.” The regulations that follow arethese: “The two barons on whose part the tournament is undertaken shall be at their pavilions two days before the commencement of the sports, when each of them shall cause his arms to be attached to his pavilion, and set up his banner in front of his parade; and all those who wish to be combatants on either side, must in like manner set up their banner on either side before the parade allotted to them. Upon the evening of the same day, they shall shew themselves in their stations, and expose their helmets to view at the windows of their pavilions. On the morrow the champions shall be at their parades by the hour of ten in the morning, to await the commands of the lord of the parade, and the governor, who are the speakers of the tournament; at this meeting the prizes of honour are determined.” In the document from which this is taken, a rich sword was to be the reward of the most successful on the part of Clarencieux, and a helmet for the best on the side of Norreys. It goes on to say, “On the morning of the day appointed for the tournament, the arms, banners and helmets of all the combatants shall be exposed at their stations, and the speakers present at the place of combat by ten of the clock, where they shall examine the arms and approve or reject them at pleasure; the examination being finished and the arms returned to the owners, the baron who is the challenger shall then cause his bannerto be placed at the beginning of the parade, and the blazon of his arms to be nailed to the roof of his pavilion; his example is to be followed by the baron on the opposite side, and all the knights of either party who are not in their stations before the nailing up of the arms, shall forfeit their privileges and not be permitted to tournay.
“The king at arms and the heralds are then commanded by the speakers to go from pavilion to pavilion crying aloud, ‘To Achievement,knights and esquires,to Achievement,’ being the notice for them to arm themselves; and soon after the company of heralds shall repeat the former ceremony, having the same authority, saying, ‘Come forth,knights and esquires,come forth;’ and when the two barons have taken their places in the lists, each of them facing his own parade, the champions on both parts shall arrange themselves, every one by the side of his banner; and then two cords shall be stretched between them, and remain in that position, until it shall please the speakers to command the commencement of the sports. The combatants shall each of them be armed with a pointless sword, having the edges rebated, and with a truncheon hanging from their saddles, and they may use either the one or the other, so long as the speakers shall give them permission, by repeating the sentence, ‘Let them go on.’ After they have sufficiently performed their exercise,the speakers are to call to the heralds, and order them to ‘Fold up the banners,’ which is the signal for the conclusion of the tournament. The banners being rolled up, the knights and esquires are permitted to return to their dwellings.”
Every knight or esquire performing in the tournament, was permitted to have one page within the lists, (but without a truncheon or any other defensive weapon,) to wait upon him, give him his sword, or truncheon, as occasion might require; and also in case of any accident happening to the armour, to repair it.
The laws of the tournament permitted any knight to unhelm himself at pleasure, if he was incommoded by the heat; none being suffered to assault him in any way, until he had replaced his helmet at the command of the speakers.
The king-at-arms and the heralds who proclaimed the tournament, had the privilege of wearing the blazon of arms of those by whom the sport was instituted; besides which, they were entitled to six ells of scarlet cloth as their fee, and had all their expenses defrayed during the continuance of the tournament; by the law of arms they had a right to the helmet of every knight when he made his first essay at a tournament; they also claimed six crowns as nail money, for affixing the blazon of arms to the pavilion. The king at arms held the banners of thetwo chief barons on the day of the tournament, and the other heralds the banners of their confederates according to their rank.
The lists for the tournaments and those appointed for ordeal combats, were appointed in the same manner; the king found the field to fight in, and the lists were made and devised by a constable; they were to be sixty paces long and forty broad, set up in good order, the ground within hard and level, without any great stones or other impediments, the entrances to them to be by two doors east and west, strongly barred with bars seven feet high, that a horse may not leap them.
After the conclusion of the tournament, the combatants retired to their homes, but usually met again in the evening at some entertainment; where they were joined by all the nobility, including the ladies, and dancing, feasting and singing concluded the day. After supper the speakers of the tournament called together the heralds appointed on both sides, and demanded from them alternately the names of those who had best performed on the opposite sides; the double list was then presented to the ladies who had been present at the pastime, and the decision was referred to them as to the award of the prizes; they selected one name from each party, and the successful heroes received their prizes from the hands of two young maidens of rank. If a knight transgressedthe rules he was excluded from the lists with a sound beating, from which alone the intercession of ladies could save him; so the influence of the fair sex had opportunities of being practically felt, as well as theoretically talked of, even then.
The juste or lance game differed from the tournament and was often included in it, when it took place at its conclusion, but it was quite consistent with the rules of chivalry for justs to be held separately; the sword was the weapon used at the tournament, the lance at the juste. The juste received the title of the “Round table game,” in the reign of Henry III., from a fraternity of knights who frequently justed together, and accustomed themselves to associate and eat together in one apartment at a round table, where every place was equally honourable (even in feudal times a taint of democracy would creep in). Historians attribute this round table game to Arthur, the son of Uter Pendragon, that famous British hero, whose achievements are so disguised with legendary wonders that his very existence has been questioned.
At both tilts and tournaments the lists were superbly decorated, surrounded by the pavilions of the champions, and ornamented with their coats and banners. The scaffolds for the accommodation of the spectators were hung with tapestry, and embroidered with gold and silver; all attended in theirmost sumptuous apparel, and the display of costly grandeur glittering over the whole surface of the field, might well earn for the memorable scene so designated, its title of the Gilden Croft. Wealth, beauty, and grandeur were concentrated into one focus, whence they blazed forth to the eye as from a burning lens.
The dress of the combatants varied according to the rank of the individual. Above the under-dress of cloth, fitting close, and common to all, was worn thechausses, or mail coverings for the feet and legs, somewhat resembling metal stockings; upon the body the gambeson, a sort of close jacket made of cloth or leather doubled and stuffed, and in itself oftentimes a most efficient case of defensive armour; this garment, without sleeves, and universally worn by all classes of men, was also occasionally introduced into the catalogue of ladies’ attire, and no doubt was the primitive model for the stays of later generations. Above the gambeson was worn thegorgetor throat piece, beneath thehauberkor coat of mail, by which it was concealed; this was the garment that peculiarly designated the rank of the wearer. Esquires might not wear sleeves of mail, and none might claim to wear the complete suit that were not possessed of certain estates. Above the armour was usually worn some outer dress, a surcoat or mantle of rich material. The sword belt was a necessary part of the warrior’sdress, and was often very elaborately embellished with precious stones, but more commonly made simply of plain leather. Another belt was also worn over the left shoulder, to support the shield.
The helmet comprised the whole armour for the head and face, and usually consisted of two parts, one moving over the other, by which means the face could be uncovered or perfectly inclosed at pleasure. These portions of the dress, however, varied to an almost infinite degree at various times, and at a later period were exchanged for the Bacinet, Cervaliere, Coif de fer, &c. &c.
Gloves of mail were attached to the sleeves of the hauberk, and were sometimes divided at the extremities for the accommodation of the fingers and thumb, but not often. Such was the military costume of the knight in armour, and the dress of the spectators, both gentlemen and ladies, must not altogether be left unnoticed. The tunic and rich surcoat above, sometimes varied with a hooded mantle, and the robe a long garment of the tunic kind, were the leading characteristics of male attire; shoes with long points, cloth sandals, ornamented with embroidery, girdles enriched with precious stones, gloves and spurs completed the suit.
The ladies wore gowns, or upper tunics, or robes, with surcoats varying much in length, sometimes being shorter than the tunic, at others trailing onthe ground, with long loose sleeves, open beneath to the elbow, and falling thence almost to the feet. Their mantles were made of the richest materials, and copiously embellished with gold, silver, and rich embroideries, sometimes decorated with fringes of gold, varying in size almost as much as material. The wimple was a head-dress, worn with or without an additional veil, usually linen, but occasionally of silk, embroidered with gold. It was a species of veil, covering the head but not the face, and fastened underneath the chin, or at the top of the head, by a circlet of gold. The hair was worn loose and flowing, often without any covering, but frequently bound by a chaplet of goldsmith’s work and flowers, or of the latter only. Boots and gloves were in the inventory of necessaries, but, alas for comfort, stockings were rare, white, black, or blue. With this faint sketch of an Anglo-Norman wardrobe, as it furnished materials to add splendour to the glittering field of sport, we bid farewell to the lists, not, however, without one more word as to the honourable position awarded to the gentler sex in the jousts, which were usually made in their especial honour, and over which they presided as judges paramount; so that it behoved every true knight to have a favourite fair one, who was not only esteemed by him as the paragon of beauty and virtue, but supplied to him often the place of a tutelary saint, to whom he paid hisvows in the day of peril; for it was then an established doctrine that “love made valour perfect, and incited heroes to great enterprizes.” Alas! for the good old times of chivalry, when women were content to makegreat warriors; but as she did her mission in that day, so may she, in this sober life of mental tiltings, lend her meed of influence to people the world withgreat men. And so farewell to tournaments; verily they are of the past, and their glitter dazzles our senses, in this generation of moralversusphysical force, when among the number of the people’s favourite heroes is the champion of Universal Peace Societies.
But we must not leave our sketch of the life in a feudal castle, without one glance at the feminine employments that served to relieve the monotonous existence of the isolated dames condemned to comparative solitude within its walls; nor are we able to discover much, if any, variety in their occupations. The embroidery frame, and an occasional spindle and distaff, before the improvements in arts and science had substituted factories and looms, were almost the only resources allowed them; but these were inexhaustible, and the many elaborate specimens of their skill that have survived the casualties of a hundred generations, bear witness to the indefatigable perseverance with which they were employed. The garments of the clergy at this period were richlyembroidered, so much so, as to excite the admiration of the pope, and induce him to issue a bull to the English priests, enjoining them to procure him vestments equally gorgeous. Many of these were the free-will offerings of the rich, and the fruits of highborn ladies’ industry. Fringe-making of gold and silver, worked upon lace without the aid of the needle, was another species of occupation afforded them, and constituted the Phrygian work often spoken of by old historians. Cyprian work was a variety of embroidery, inasmuch as it was a thin, transparent texture like gauze, namedcyprus, worked with gold. Cyprus was a term applied also to black crape, then appropriated exclusively to widows’ mourning; possibly this might have been the origin of “wearing the cypress.” Embroidery was not alone confined to ornaments of dress, or even clerical vestments; hangings for the chambers, and pictures on almost every possible subject, were produced from the needle.
The tapestry at Bayeux, in Normandy, attributed to Matilda, the queen of the Conqueror, represents the history of Harold, king of England, and William of Normandy, from the embassy of the former to Duke William, at the command of Edward the Confessor, to his final overthrow at Hastings. The ground of this work is a white linen cloth or canvas, one foot eleven inches in depth, and two hundredand twelve in length. The figures are all in their proper colours, of a style not unlike those of japan ware, having no pretence to symmetry or proportion. It is preserved with great care in the cathedral dedicated to Thomas à Becket, in Normandy, and is annually exhibited for eight days, commencing on St. John’s day, and is calledDuke William’s toilette.
It is, however, extremely questionable whether it was the work of the royal lady,—many figures in it would indicate that its manufacture was of more recent date—be it as it may, it is a wondrous specimen of patient industry, and valuable for the representation of manners and customs of the times traced upon it.
Here we bid farewell to castle halls, to the ghosts of belted knights and hooded dames, to spinning wheels and tapestries, falcons, jennets, tournaments, and banquets, to the border’s bord upon the skirting of his lord’s domain, the serf’s log hut, the cowherd’s shed, and the prisoner’s dungeon,—the moat, once deep and flowing, now dried up, and teeming with cultivated trees and shrubs, and ornamental flowers, and sculptured figures,—we say adieu to the past history, written on the flints and mortar of the ramparts, that have braved the “battle and the breeze,” for near a thousand years,—and leave the soaring heights, whence we may look down upon the little city world below as on a stage, whose scenes andslips are all laid bare beneath us in their skeleton machinery—dark lanes and lumbering alleys crowded round, and shut in out of sight, by facial frontings of glass, and brick, and plaster. Churches and heaped-up churchyards, bursting their walls with the accumulated corruption of centuries of generations,—distant villages and village spires,—and spots made sacred by the blood of hero-martyrs,—the winding river, once the stormy sea-passage for Norsemen and Saxon fleets—and take one final leave of the giant mound,—whose origin, whether first reared in Celtic ages far remote, a temple to the Sun, or a portion of the far-famed Icknild Way, that crosses our island like a belt from south-west to north-east, whether the architecture of Danes, Saxons, or Normans, is alike full of history and of poetry, and the well garnered store-house of many a rich and precious truth,—a monument of the past, ever present to our eye, as a landmark by which to measure the progress of our nation in religion, freedom, and social happiness.
Market-place.—Present aspect.—Visit to its stalls.—Norfolk Marketwomen.—Christmas Market.—Early History.—Extracts from old records.—Domestic scene of 13th century.—Early Crafts.—Guilds.—Medley of Historical Facts.—Extract from Diary of Dr. Edward Browne.—The City in Charles the Second’s reign.—Duke’s Palace Gardens.—Manufactures.—Wool.—Worsted.—Printing.—Caxton.—Specimens of Ancient Newspapers.—Blomefield.
The old city, so rich in antiquarian remains, can boast but slow progress in modern architectural developments; nor may it vie with many a younger town in its contrivances for the comfort and conveniences of those most useful members of society—the market-folks. No Grainger has arisen, to rear a monument to his own fame, and of his city’s prosperity, in the form of a shelter for this important class of the town and country populace. May be, the picturesque beauty of the Flemish scene, with its changeful canopy of “ethereal blue,” or neutral tint, toned down at whiles to hues of sombre gloom, beneaththe heavy shade of passing storms of hail and thunder, or more steady-falling rain and snow, has made the philanthropists of these reforming times conservatives all, on this one point, while model cottages, baths and washhouses, almshouses for freemen, and almost every other scheme ingenuity may devise to testify the care and thought bestowed upon the public weal, are rising up around. Let the cry of “Protection” once again be raised, not for the “distressed agriculturist” salesman, in his handsome corn exchange, but in favour of the “unprotected females” that sit unsheltered from the sun or storm, to vend the produce of the poultry-yards, the dairy-house, and market-garden.
But though no Temple to Commerce of the larder has been erected—a fact to be deplored in a utilitarian sense—it can never be denied that the good old seat of thriving trade can boast as fine a specimen of a genuine old market-place as may well be found in this day of competition and rivalry. Its motley assemblage of buildings, ranged round the open square, of all styles and all ages, jostling against one another, or here and there huddled together into all sorts of inconceivable groups of varied and fantastic outline; the young ones of to-day starting up with bold and saucy front, and verily squeezing out from among them their quaint, old-fashioned, gable-ended kinsfolk of older date, or sometimes creeping out, as itwere, from beneath them, content with shewing a modern face in some lower window, decked with all the new-fangled conceits of the latest fashions, and allowing their ancestors quiet resting-place aloft, where to moulder away into decay, are a chronology of history in themselves. Now and then, the fretted ironwork of some miniature parade, hanging midway in the air, and clinging to the perpendicular of masonry above some new plate-glassed and glittering front, suggests thoughts of marine villas, moonlight and sea views, and all those pretty poetical fancies associated with a lodging at some fashionable watering-place, and one wonders how they ever came to be transported thither, and for why? They that own them tell us that they have their use, in the city, where the love of pageantry is an heir-loom from generations long since passed away whose birthright was to minister to the gorgeous magnificence of fraternities and guilds, banquettings and processions, that read like fairy tales in this sober nineteenth century; and we would believe in their utility, were it no other than to afford a bird’s eye view of the busy scenes of homely traffic going on upon a market day, amongst the accumulated heaps of provisions for the daily wants of life.
The wants of life! Who amongst us knows the meaning of the words, therealitythey hide? Who that has numbered among the wants of life, the goldto purchase luxury or ornament, place or power, the ways and means to shine and glitter in the world, where men are prized by what theyseem, rather than what they are; the wherewith to pay the idly accumulated debts, incurred through mean attempts to cover the rags of poverty, or decent homely garments of honesty, with tinsel mockeries of wealth’s trappings? Who amongst these knows aught of the meaning of thewants of life? Ask him who has knownHunger, has been face to face with want and starvation, has shared with loved and loving ones, weak babes, and sick and helpless mothers, the task of driving these unbidden guests away, has felt the gnawing pangs of their demon power, while gazing upon plenty, upon the wealth of food and sustenance displayed before his eyes! Is it not more marvellous and strange, that such piles as a market displays should ever be permitted to lie safe within the arrow-shot of gaunt and wasting poverty, than that the annals of our police reports should now and then record how poverty and crime sometimes go hand in hand?
But to look more in detail at the picture offered on a summer market-day. There to the left sit congregated together the vendors of the far-famed staple produce of the country farm-yards, sheltered from the heat by the artificial grove of variegated umbrellas, serving, or attempting to serve, the double purpose of protection from the sun in summer, andthe rain in winter and summer. The poultry “pads” and butter-stalls are one. Turkeys, and geese, and fowls, and sausages, and little round white cheeses, share the baskets and benches with eggs andpintsof butter, in the land where that commodity is sold byliquidmeasure, whose equivalent is somewhere near about 1lb. 3 oz.
There is a legend that one who sits here is the heroine of an old tale, which goes to the effect that “once upon a time,” when the inspector came his round to test the weights of all the measured pints, the old lady was observed slily to slip a half crown into the end of a certain pint, and hand it forward to bear the scrutiny; a bystander, who watched the trick, a moment after laid his finger on the identical pint and begged to purchase it, resisting all evasion on the part of the discomfited saleswoman, who, compelled to submit, turned out eventually the “biter bit.”
Thronging around this neighbourhood, and proffering their services with most assiduous perseverance, are a host of most amiable-looking porter women, liveried in white aprons and sleeves, with a pair of huge peck baskets dangling on their arms. Tumbling, and bumping, and jostling among them, drowning their pleadings in a deafening chorus of discordant cries, come the itinerant venders of small wares—“lucifers three boxes a penny,” “cabbage-nets only a penny,” “reels of cotton two for a penny,”little dangling bunches of skewers, ranged in progressive order on queer and mysteriously twisted holders, that seem designed to puzzle any mechanical skill to get them off again, “only a penny;” laces, and saucepans, and stationery, and kettles, thrust into notice as though haberdashers, and tinmen, and stationers were simultaneously rushing off to the gold diggings, and disposing of their goods piecemeal by auction. Ere the next range of stalls may be explored, the pathway is obstructed by some “literate” specimen of the blind, with an attendant concourse of listeners eagerly drinking in the titles of his sheet of hundred songs for a penny. “There’s a good time coming,” “All’s lost now,” “My bark is on the shore,” and “I’m on the Sea,” &c. &c.; or should any great tragedy or judicial murder have occurred recently, to furnish him with a still more profitable stock in trade, such as a “last dying speech and confession,” or “full, true, and particular account” of some “shocking and brutal outrage,” somewhat may be seen and heard of how the minds and tastes of the ignorant are vitiated, and the morbid cravings of diseased imaginations fed; and the hawker of this food for the million, forms living evidence that the eye is not the only member through whose aid vice may gain entrance to the soul. But there is little time or opportunity to philosophize amid the din of importunity that is ringing uponthe ears, “What d’ye luke for? fine guse? butifull fowill?” And there stands one who claims especial notice—the merry bacon woman, amid her throng of earnest customers. There she stands, or rather moves; stillness is a state to which she must be a total stranger, we could fancy. “Good day, ma’am.” “What’s for you, sir?” “Nice pork,dear? black meat? I’ll waitof yethis minute, sir.” “Yes, ma’am, beautiful ham; did you please to want any? Oh, thank you; very well, another day I shall beproudto waitof ye.” “No harm in asking,” she adds, turning apologetically to her more profitable customers. And so she goes on, ever moving, ever talking, ever cheerful, civil, and attentive, one never-ending strain of courtesy and kindness pouring from her lips, while her hands are ever busy cutting and weighing, and folding up in fine white linen cloths, her sausages and bacon, and black meat, and still nicer white juvenile-looking pork, just fresh from the pickle. Probably she has a home somewhere, but her sphere of usefulness and theatre of glory must be at the market-stall; she must have been born and bred a market-woman. Further on, there sits a melancholy and original old lady, proprietress of a heterogeneous kind of heap, composed of small quantities of the choicest produce of various sources of supply—stray joints of pork, trifling displays of butter, a few eggs, and an occasional specimen of poultry; but her fame isbuilt upon her unrivalled “tatoes,” hidden up in pads, and carefully concealed from the eyes of chance passengers; their discovery is a mine of wealth to the privileged few, especially in bad seasons. Dealing forth sparingly, like a miser counting out his treasures, the queen of murphies compensates for the reserve that would seem to imply her belief that her purchasers were begging favours of her, by the involuntary boon she confers upon the lover of idioms, in her quaint displays of her county’s dialect. The ordinary greeting of “How d’ye do?” will be met by the assurance that she “don’tfare to feelno matters,” or she “fares tofeelright muddled,” or “no how,” or that she is scarce fit to be “abroad.” Her “tatoes” she will recommend as eating like balls of flour, if cookedenow(a word indiscriminately used to express quantity and degree). She will occasionally detail particulars of her market-horse’s “trickiness” when he “imitated” to kick on the road, and how she “gots” him on as well as she could. Her breakfast jug she will designate agotch, and many other like specimens will she afford of the contents of the vocabulary of East Anglia. A traveller may with little difficulty fancy he is listening to some native of the distant county Devon; and, strange to say, theguse,fule, andenow, and other striking similarities of brogue and dialect, are not the only features of resemblance these two countiesbear to each other. The ancient rood screens of the Norfolk churches have many of them been found exactly to correspond with those found in Devonshire, and only there. In the celebrated rebellions of Edward the Sixth’s reign, many remarkable features of resemblance were observed in the character of the outbreaks at these distant points,—so much so, as to suggest the idea of secret communication being kept up between them. Whether both alike owe their peculiarities to the common parentage of the Iceni, a tribe of whom have been said to have settled in Devonshire as well as Pembrokeshire, or they are referable to any less remote link of connection, antiquarians may perhaps at some future day make clear. Certain it is, the “southron” is apt to be easily beguiled into the belief that he has met a fellow-countryman or woman among the folks who deem themselves another race than the people of the “sheeres.”
But we have here wandered far aside in our market trip; next come in due order the butcher-stalls, taking a higher rank in the social scale of market society than the humblerpads, though their wares may not compete with their neighbours for a world-wide fame—south-down mutton, prime little scot, and short-horn beef, with the usual attendant displays of calves’ white heads with staring eyes, and mangled feet hanging to dismembered legs and shoulders by little strings of sinew, looking as thoughthey were carelessly left on by accident,notto affect the weight, and other mysterious manifestations of the internal anatomy of oxen and sheep, and queer-looking conglomerations of odds and ends, transmogrified by some cooking process into very greasy imitations of brawn, and selling by the name of pork cheeses,—these make up the attractions of the butcher department, not over-inviting to look upon, even to those who are far from objecting to well-disguised appeals to their carnivorous propensities in the form of savoury dishes.
The lover of beauty will soon permit his eye to wander on and rest upon the treasures of the market-garden, where it may revel in a perfect sea of “Bremer” lusciousness; asparagus—seakale—peas, marafats and blues—beans, kidneys dwarfs, and windsor—salads and cresses—radishes in radiating bunches and globular bunches—cabbages and cauliflowers, that may perplex cooks and boilers by their magnitude—cucumbers and melons, and all the pumpkin tribe. Fruit—shining heaps of cherries—trays of bright glistening currants, with their little seeds peeping through as “natural” as the gems in the great Russian cabinet—strawberries and raspberries on their wooden trays, with the little skimmer-like spades to shovel them up, and the choice ones packed up in their little pints, sheltered from the sun by the fresh green leaf tied over—and sundryand divers wares from foreign parts lending new features to the home department, since the tariff of the “people’s friend” came into operation. But the crowning glory of the picture is the sovereign of the stall, the sturdy market-gardener, full of strength and sinew, the evidence of honest healthful labour meeting its due reward,—a fitting representative of the great base upon whose soundness rests the column of wealth, and capitol of rank, that with it form the pillar of our nation’s social prosperity. He knows not what it is to seek for work, but rather needs to pluralise himself to satisfy the demands upon his skill, and time, and taste; and fairly has he earned his reputation both in horti and floriculture. His rustic little home, with its thatched roof, and ivy and clematis twined verandah, lies in the very midst of a city of gardens almost of his own creation, watched and tended by him with a care that has rendered them the fairest line of beauty art ever devised to grace a road-side pathway through the suburbs of a city; and who ever saw or tasted wares that could rival the produce of his own little profitable domain? But the good-humoured smile of conscious superiority in his profession, that plays upon his features, is the market-gardener’s peculiar fascination. Talk to him of chemical manures or rich guano, how he will smile! and what a tale will he unfold of roses all burnt up, geraniums run toleaf, polyanthuses converted into cabbages, without the advantage of being edible; auriculas dying, &c. “May dosomewheres, but not for flower or market-gardens.” Beyond him, lies spread out a rich carpet of flowers, grouped by the hands of younger and humbler ones, whom one might almost call the lay floricultural professors. Geraniums, and fuchsias, and bright blue salvias, verbenas of every hue, from deep maroon, through crimson, up to white; sweet-scented heliotrope, and richly shaded primroses, that make the tenants of the woods look pale with envy. A pity it seems to disturb the harmony of colour, so perfect a parterre does it form, with the back-ground of shrubs that stand in such rich clusters behind them, all waiting to be transplanted to new homes. In the very midst of them rises a mysterious-looking little ark of canvass, resting from its weekly labour of perambulating the streets and suburbs through which it has been borne, sedan fashion, by the pair of unclassical-looking hobbledehoys that own the gay treasures it is formed to shelter, and whose lips can manage to send forth a string of nomenclature that may fairly shake the nerves of any modest purchaser. Sweet simple-looking little floral gems, they will recommend to notice as Gilea rosea adorata, Clarkia fimbricata, Coreopsis nigra, speciosa, Colinsea rubra, all hardy annuals; and with the utmost nonchalance describesome trembling little creeper as Tropœlum Campatica Fuchsia Carolinæ, Campanula Campatica, and Lobelia ramosa, all safely meant, we presume, to conceal the relationship of the owners to the familiar tenants of the cottage border. A novice must seize in desperation upon some one that, shorn of itsishiiorosum, may chance to be remembered, lest his fate should resemble that of the fair lady, who once professed to own in her garden the “aurora borealis” and “delirium tremens.”
Among the scientific nurseries that clothe almost every outskirt of the city, may perhaps be found grander exotics, or more luxuriant varieties of floral beauty; but these fragments of botanic skill and lore are fair specimens of the inheritance bequeathed to the sons of the soil by those great master-minds whose gardens once drew Evelyn from the metropolis upon a visit to this then pre-eminent seat of wealth and magnificence. “My Lord’s Gardens,” that skirted the water-side, whose quadrangle contained a bowling-green, a wilderness, and garden, with walks of forty feet in breadth surrounding them, have passed away, a fragment of the wilderness alone remains to mark the site of the glorious displays of wealth and fashion once paraded among them; but the name, associated with the memory of the times, is a star of the first magnitude, in the galaxy of the city’s firmament of great men.
Sir Thomas Browne, the philosopher, the physician, the naturalist, the antiquarian, and the botanist, the associate and friend of the most eminent men that graced the age in which he lived, and the historian whose works have enriched the literature of the world, stands first in the long list of names that are linked with the beauties of the vegetable kingdom; a city that has sent forth a Lindley, a Hooker, and a Smith, to be professors in the great world of science, as his followers, has cause, indeed to honour the memory of him who sowed the first seeds in the garden, that has reared such giants from its soil.
But there is yet another picture to be viewed of homely traffic; the Christmas market-day, when the old place and people seem to be in the zenith of their glory. Each poultry-stall overflowing with the turkeys, geese, and fowls, that have not found an exit through the myriad avenues opened for their flight to every province, town, and city in the land. There they lie in state, sharing the sovereignty of the season, with bright-gemmed holly boughs and pearly mistletoe, that deck and garnish every pad, and stall, and bench, and lie heaped up in shining stacks of magnitude that may well suggest to the young novice a question as to how the slow-growing holly and rare parasite could have been found year after year in such profusion. Country walks, holly-skirted lanes, and park enclosures, may tellsomething of the one; and alas! for the poetry of the Druids and the oaks, the apple orchards now claim almost the sole honour of giving shelter to the other—the ancient deity of the woods; they will scarce allow the king of the forest a partial share in the tribute offerings to merry Christmas.
The bustling eve, when midnight surprises the scrambling teems of “Trotty Vecks,” gathering up the fragments left from rich folk’s caterings, that they too may have a savour of something more than the compliments of the season; when the remnants of the bountiful display that has been hoarded up for the highest bidders through the busy day, are auctioned off at the buyer’s own price, and fall thus perchance within the compass of the weaver’s earnings, then is the hour to see the spirit of peace and good-will towards men stalking abroad, and lifting from men’s hearts and faces the load of weariness and veil of care, transmuting by his magic touch the poor man’s copper into gold, and giving to his little stores a widow’s cruise-like power to cheer and comfort happy living hearts. No one who dwells in the old city should deem it fruitless toil to wend their way through the old market-place on Christmas Eve, and take a poet’s lesson from the scene!
But there are other pictures still to be seen within the quaint old Elizabethan frame-work of the city’s market-place than scenes of merchandise, in these daysof monster meetings. Who can forget the human gatherings that have many a time and oft, within the limits of even childhood’s memory, been witnessed here, when gable roofs, and parapets, windows, and balconies, church towers, and Guildhall leads, have swarmed with living thousands; gay dressed “totties” and dames, aye, and sober-minded lords of the creation too! all eager and intent to watch from safe quarters some common object of attraction that has drawn together a mighty multitude of the people, with their proverbial love of sight-seeing, an inheritance bequeathed to them by their ancestral pageantries. Slight stimulus is needed to send the heart’s blood of the city through every vein and artery to this centre, where it pulsates in deep and heavy throbs of joy, or hope, or anger, as the case may be; true, in these modern days the common wants and common blessings that have bound the sympathies of the million into one, cause the spectacle of tumultuous hate and bitterness, knocking together of heads, &c, to be a rare manifestation of popular enthusiasm; more frequently one desire, one feeling animates the body aggregate, be it to see the mammoth train of a Hughes or Van Amburgh, theentréeof a royal duke, the failure of a promised fountain bid to play by a new water company, the more successful display of fireworks at the same behest, the popping of some threescore pensioners in honour of someroyal birthday, or the advent of some political election. On each and all of such occasions, and many more, the filling up of the frame-work is a picture of life, of concentrated human power, will, and passion, full of effect; may be, it needs an adequate cause to give it full strength, but everywhere it is full of interest, and the good old city’s market-place would not be fairly chronicled were its monster meetings of sight-seers deemed unworthy a passing comment. Pageantry has been numbered among the chartered rights of the citizens, from the days of “mysteries,” when the itinerant stage, with its sacred drama provided by the church, was the only theatre known, through the age of tournaments, the season of royal visits, Elizabethan processions, and triumphal arches, of guilds, of Georges and dragons, down to the last relic of the spirit of olden times—the chairing of its members; and not even the scant nourishment offered in this nineteenth century, has yet sufficed to starve and wither the seeds thus sown and fostered in the very nature of the people.
In a work that professes not to follow out the thread of history through all its variable windings, or note consecutively all the beads of truth that have been carved by the hand of time, and strung upon its surface, but only here and there to pause, as some gem more glittering than its fellows meets the eye, or some quaint rude relic of a day gone bylays claim to a passing curiosity, wonder, or pity, we feel at liberty to make a kaleidoscope sort ofpatternof our gleanings and notes on the old market-place. Interwoven with its progress, and associated with its memories, must be almost every historical reminiscence, peculiarly belonging to an important municipality, and thriving mart of commerce and manufactures; from the first simple gatherings in the outer court of the castle, to the days when trades and crafts, brought over by Norman intruders, and flourishing under the skilful tutelage of Flemish refugees, clustered together in groups around the old croft, the saddlers, the hosiers, the tanners, the mercers, the parmenters, the goldsmiths, the cutlers, each with their ownrow, to the time when staples were fixed, or right of wholesale dealing granted—when cloth halls witnessed the measuring and sealing by government inspectors of every manufactured piece of cloth, to ensure fairness of dealing between buyer and seller—when sumptuary laws regulated quantity, quality, and pattern of the dresses of all dutiful and loyal subjects—down through ages of fluctuating vicissitudes of prosperity and adversity—tremulous shakings—and reviving struggles against the tide of competition that has sunk the first and greatest manufacturing city our country once could boast, beneath the level of many a nurseling of yesterday, a mere mushroom in growth and age—from the eraof ultra-carnivorous diet, when boars, peacocks, venison, and porpoise, were scattered in plentiful profusion on the boards of butchers’ stalls, and in the regions of “Puleteria,”—when the potato, brocoli, turnip, onion, and radish, were unknown—the tansy, the rampion, cow cabbage, and salsify, their only substitutes in the days when vegetarians were not;—when quinces, medlars, rude grapes, and mulberries, wild raspberries and strawberries, supplied the place of a modern dessert, with the valuable addenda of hazel, and walnuts, whose beautiful wood even then was prized as an article of manufacture for cups and bowls, under the name ofmasere—down to the scene of the present day, as it has been pictured already.
Manifold have been the fleeting shadows that have peopled its disc, now bright, now dark, its area now traversed by triumphal arches and gorgeous processions, now serving as a platform for a gallows, whereon a Roberts and a Barber suffered for their loyalty to his majesty, Charles the First; in one age witnessing the rise of an oratory in its very midst, and a chaplain to minister to spiritual cravings, in the heart of material abundance; the next echoing to the ruthless hammers of destructive zealots, sweeping from their path every stone or carving that bore trace of the finger of the “scarlet lady.”
But although a consecutive detail of its rise and progress may not be within the province of our pen,we may endeavour to trace a few of the leading features of its history since the era of its first rise into existence as a fishing hamlet, when the sea washed its shores, and the huts of a few fishermen, perhaps, were the only habitations scattered over its surface. Here they dwelt, no doubt, in peaceful security, when the huge mound, topped with its towering castle, rose up in their midst, and their sovereigns fixed their dwelling-place within its strongholds, to be succeeded, after the departure of the Romans, by the feudal lords or earls of Danish and Saxon conquerors, in whose time the market-place was the magna crofta or great croft of the castle. At the gates of the ancient castles the markets were continually set, following the precedent of the assemblage of booths that gathered round the gates of the Roman camps. These, from being at first moveable stalls or shelters for goods, grew in after-years into towns, boroughs, and cities, many of them taking their names from the castles or camps, and were calledchesters. The country people were not allowed to carry provisions into Roman camps; at each gate was a strong guard, that suffered none to enter the camp without licence from the commanding officer: this guard consisted of onecohort, and one troop at least, from which sprung the modern term ofcourt, orcohort, of guard. The commanding officer of the guard at the gate hadoversight of the market, punished such as sold by false weights and measures, brought bad provisions, or were guilty of any other offence in the market, and arbitrated in all cases of dispute. The Saxons, those exterminating conquerors, who so liberally parcelled out their neighbours’ territory into the famous divisions of the Heptarchy, next figured upon the scene, and thecastellanssucceeded the officer of the guard in the duties of his office, in later times to be fulfilled by pie-powder courts and clerks of the market. At this period, markets at the castle gates grew so important as to be composed of durable houses, as durable at least as wooden shambles were likely to be; and of such like constructions were the first outlines of the market-place composed, the fishmongers’ and butchers’ shops of the present day being the nearest similitudes that can be found to illustrate their features.
From this time the history of the market-place becomes identified with the progress of the borough, its struggles for growth being somewhat impeded, we fancy, by the tithes and taxes extorted by barons and bishops, between whom we may fancy the poor fisherfolks began to “fare rather sadly,” scarcely knowing what was their own, or if, indeed, they had any own at all. To sum up their miseries, old chroniclers record that about this time the sea began to withdraw its arm, which to them had been a great support,and the fishermen, who were bound to pay an annual tithe of herrings to the bishops of thesee, found themselves in much the same plight as the Israelites of old, when doomed to make bricks without straw—in their case to supply herrings without a fishery—and were therefore reduced to the unpleasant necessity of thenceforth purchasing the wherewith to pay the lasting imposition. Notwithstanding all these impediments the progress of the borough was rapid; houses and churches sprung up thick and fast; so that at the time of the survey, in the reign of the “Confessor,” we find record of twenty-five parish churches, and one thousand three hundred burgesses; of sheep-walks, mills, and hides of land, (a hide being as much as one plough could till in a year,) of taxes, of honey, and bear dogs.
Churches were owned indiscriminately by bishops, earls, and burgesses; the materials of which they were constructed, chiefly wood, though occasionally rough flints and stones cemented by a durable mortar were substituted; the towers were circular, bricks were employed for pavements, and bells were used. The ancients conceived the sound of metal to be an antidote against evil spirits; and the adoption of bells into the Christian church, and their consecration, was but a variation of the practices of the pagans, who at the feasts of Vulcan and Minerva, consecrated trumpets for religious uses.
Such was the condition of the town and market-place, when the Norman Conqueror, whose coming produced such mighty changes in the land, brought over from the continent a host of foreigners, who settled themselves down in almost every part of the kingdom, and introduced trades and crafts of every variety, giving birth to the great manufacturing spirit that has grown to be so distinguishing a feature of our national greatness. Among the foreigners who established themselves in this district, we find the name ofWimer, a name yet prefixed to one of the great wards or districts of the city—the Wimer ward. At this period, perhaps the most prominent characteristic of the secular history of the times, especially in connection with trade, is the important position held by the Jews.
The Norman duke had brought with him a great number of this race of people, and although their religion was despised and bitterly hated, they monopolized almost every branch of trade, and so much of the learning of the day, that they took a high place both in commercial and civil transactions. In this city they successively had two extensive synagogues and colleges, where medicine and rabbinical divinity were taught together.
Pharmacy, education, and all monetary transactions of any importance, seem to have come within their province, their utility and wealth preserving them,for the time at least, from anything more than petty persecution. The history, however, of little St. William, given elsewhere, and other similar records that have been handed down, betray the jealousy and ill-will that existed between them and the Christians, even during the season of their prosperity, when royalty, as in the time of Rufus, patronized them.
Meantime the city had become a bishopric; a monastery, three friaries, and a nunnery sprung up in quick succession, betraying the growth of ecclesiastical power, and the presence of a great rival to the secular authority claimed by the ministers of civil justice; itinerant judges had been established for trying great crimes, such as murder or theft, and coroners had been instituted to hold inquests upon any persons dying suddenly, or found dead; either to acquit them of self murder, or seize their goods; the citizens were also exempted from the judgment of the law by single combat by Richard I. Among the events of interest bearing very early date is the royal visit of the first Henry, in the day when the king was his own tax-gatherer, and when, failing to receive his dues in lawful coin of the realm, he was wont to take them in kind, and to tarry until himself and suite had eaten up the hogs and sheep, and cows and geese, whose addition to his retinue would have been otherwise very burdensome. So liberalwas the entertainment afforded the royal visitor here, that his majesty was pleased to confer upon the citizens many privileges as a mark of gratitude, among which exemption from such like visitations in future was included.
The next visit of royalty is attributed to Edward the First, whose generosity was evidenced by the command issued speedily after his return thither, that the Jews throughout the kingdom should be charged with unlawfully clipping and adulterating the coin of the realm, as an excuse for their persecution, imprisonment, and final extermination. The religious antipathies of the zealous crusader would not suffice to explain these atrocities; but the ambition of the warlike monarch seeking to replenish his exhausted treasury, that he might prosecute expensive foreign enterprises, gives a more satisfactory clue to the origin of cruelties, that led to such important confiscations being made to the crown. In obedience to the royal will, the beautiful college of the Jews in this city was plundered and burnt, its coffers emptied into the royal exchequer, and its tenants banished or imprisoned. An inn, called “Abraham’s Hall,” was soon after raised in the immediate neighbourhood, to memorialize the event; but an old ricketty gable or two, hidden away behind fair modern frontings of brickwork and stucco, is all that remains of this monument. St. George in combat with theDragon, now figures on the sign board affixed to the inn that occupies one portion of its site.
It is some credit to the ministers of justice in the city, that we find upon their records, traces of the efforts made to bring to punishment some of the actual perpetrators of the outrages in Jewry, albeit they could perhaps only be deemed instruments in the hands of higher powers. Extracts from the “Coroners’ Rolls,” containing accounts of robberies and street frays in this reign and the preceding, prove this fact, and afford in addition curious evidence of the state of society at that period. For the quaint and amusing details they give, we must render thanks to the learned and skilled in antiquarian lore, obsolete orthography, black letter type, &c., but, for whose assistance in rescuing them from obscurity, and interpreting their meaning, they must to us have remained veiled in an impenetrable incognita.
Amongst them is the record of an “inquisition made of the fire raised in Jewry,” and a “precept given to apprehend all the felons concerned.” Another is so graphic, that we feel able to see the whole picture it gives at a glance—the widow sitting beside the bier of her husband, the sanctity of her sorrow invaded by brute violence, the house pillaged, and the corpse plundered and burnt in the agonised wife’s presence. The words of the roll say, “Katharina, the wife of Stephen Justice, accusedRalph, son of Robert Andrew, the gaoler, William Kirby Gaunter, William Crede, Walter de Hereham, John, servant of Nicholas de Ingham, and Nicholas sometime servant of Nicholas de Sopham, and Nicholas de Gayver, that when she was at peace with God and the king, in the house of Stephen Justice her husband, and the Thursday night after the feast of King Edmund, in the forty-eighth year of the reign of King Henry, the son of King John (1263), they came in the town of Norwich, in Fybriggate, St. Clement’s, and broke the oaken gates, and the hooks and the hinges of iron, with hatchets, bars, wedges, swords, knives, and maces, and flung them down into the court, and feloniously entered; that they then broke the pine wood doors of the hall, and the hinges and iron work of them, and the chains, bolts, and oaken boards of the windows. Afterwards they entered the door of the hall chamber towards the south, and robbed that chamber of two swords, value 3s.6d., one ivory handled anlace, value 12d., one iron head piece, value 10d., an iron staff, value 4d.; one cow leather quirre (cuirass) with iron plates, value half a mark; and one wambeis (a body garment stuffed with cotton, wool, or tow), and coming thence into the hall, they burnt the body of her husband, as it there lay upon a bier, together with a blanket of ‘reins,’ value 3s.; and took away with them a linen cloth, value 18d.The said Katharinaimmediately raised hue and cry, from street to street, from parish to parish, and from house to house, until she came into the presence of the bailiffs and coroners. They also stole a lined cloth of the value of 5s., and one hood ofPers(Persian) with squirrel’s fur, value 10s.”
A writer in the Archæological Journal describes the houses of this period as possessing only a ground floor, of which the principal apartment was the aire, aitre, or hall, into which the principal door opened, and which was the room for cooking, eating, receiving visitors, and the other ordinary uses of domestic life. Adjacent to this, was the chamber which was by day the private apartment and resort of the female portion of the household, and by night the bed room. Strangers and visitors generally slept in the hall, beds being made for them on the floor. A stable was frequently adjacent to the hall, probably on the side opposite to the chamber or bed-room.
Another memorandum on the rolls, records the deaths of Henry Turnecurt and Stephen de Walsham, who “were killed in the parish of St. George, before the gate of the Holy Trinity, St. Philip and James’ day, in the same year. The coroners and bailiffs went and made inquisition. Inquisition then made was set forth in a certain schedule. Afterwards came master Marc de Bunhale, clerk, and Ralph Knict, with many others, threatening thecoroners to cut them to pieces, unless the schedule was given up, and then they took Roger the coroner, and by force led him to his own house, with swords and axes, until the said Roger took the schedule from his chest; and then they took him with the schedule to St. Peter of Mancroft church, and there the aforesaid Ralph tore away the schedule from the hands of Roger, and bore it away, and before his companions, in the manner of fools, cut it into small pieces; and with much ado, Roger the coroner escaped from their hands in great fear and tremor. The coroners say they cannot make inquisition, by reason of the imminence of the war.” The disturbances alluded to were the dissensions going on between the king and barons.
Another describes an attack of four men, one of them a priest, upon one man in his shop in the market, where he was killed. Among many other similar accounts of these troubled times, stands the description of various felons, who sheltered themselves within the walls of the sanctuary, a privilege permitted from the time of Alfred, whose laws granted protection for three days and nights to any within the walls of a church; William the Conqueror confirmed and extended the privilege. In the times of feudal tyranny, this refuge was oftentimes of considerable advantage to innocent persons falsely accused, but as frequently was the shelter of crime.
In a case quoted from this authority, the felon professes to have sought refuge from punishment awaiting robberies, of which he acknowledges himself guilty. Upon the church of St. Gregory there yet remains a curious escutcheon, a part of the knocker, always then placed upon the door of a church, for the purpose of aiding those who sought refuge in sanctuary. A curious account of the ceremony of abjuration of the realm by one who had taken refuge in Durham Cathedral, is given in the York volume of the Archæological Institute.
“A man from Wolsingham is committed to prison for theft. He escapes, and seeks refuge in the Cathedral. He takes his stand before the shrine of St. Cuthbert, and begs for a coroner. John Rachet, the coroner of Chester ward, goes to him, and hears his confession. The culprit, in the presence of the sacrist, sheriff, under-sheriff, and others, by a solemn oath renounces the kingdom. He then strips himself to his shirt, and gives up his clothing to the sacrist as his fee. The sacrist restores the clothing—a white cross of wood is put into his hand, and he is consigned to the under-sheriff, who commits him to the care of the nearest constable, who hands him over to the next, and he to the next, in the direction of the coast. The last constable puts him into a ship, and he bids an eternal farewell to his country.”
“A man from Wolsingham is committed to prison for theft. He escapes, and seeks refuge in the Cathedral. He takes his stand before the shrine of St. Cuthbert, and begs for a coroner. John Rachet, the coroner of Chester ward, goes to him, and hears his confession. The culprit, in the presence of the sacrist, sheriff, under-sheriff, and others, by a solemn oath renounces the kingdom. He then strips himself to his shirt, and gives up his clothing to the sacrist as his fee. The sacrist restores the clothing—a white cross of wood is put into his hand, and he is consigned to the under-sheriff, who commits him to the care of the nearest constable, who hands him over to the next, and he to the next, in the direction of the coast. The last constable puts him into a ship, and he bids an eternal farewell to his country.”
There were usually chambers over the porches of churches, in which two men slept, for the purpose of being ready at all hours to admit applicants. In proof of the expense attending the maintaining of persons in the sanctuary, it is said that “in 1491, the burgesses in parliament acquainted the assembly that they had been at great expense in getting an ordinance of parliament to authorize them in a quiet way to take one John Estgate out of sanctuary, the said John having entered the churchyard of St. Simon and St. Jude, and there remained for a long time past, during which time, the city being compelled to keep watch on him day and night, lest he should escape, was at great charge and trouble. The ordinance being passed, John Pynchamour, one of the burgessess, went to the sanctuary and asked John Estgate whether he would come out and submit to the law, or no; and upon his answering he ‘would not,’ he in a quiet manner went to him, led him to the Guildhall, and committed him to prison.”
Another entry of an event that transpired during the troubled reign of Henry III., bears reference to the memorable disputes between the citizens and the monks of the priory, of which the Ethelbert gateway, leading into the Cathedral Close, is a monument; the citizens having had the penance of erecting it, imposed upon them for their destructive attacks upon the monastery, a great portion of which,including parts of the cathedral, they pillaged and burnt. The record states that “one John Casmus was found slain on the Tuesday next after the feast of St. Laurence, by William de Brunham, prior of Norwich, at the gates of St. Trinity, on the eastern side; the said prior having struck him with a certain ‘fanchone’ on the head, from which blow he instantly died. The coroners are afraid to make inquisition, for fear of a felonious assault; a result rendered very probable by the known temper of the prior, who, by his violent conduct, is said to have contributed materially to the unhappy disturbances.”
Long-cherished bitterness and jealousies respecting their several limits of jurisdiction, had found occasion for outbreak the preceding week to that mentioned in the record, at the annual fair, held on Trinity Sunday, before the gates of the cathedral, on the ground known as Tombland, from having anciently been a burial place. The servants of the monastery, and the citizens, had come into collision at some games that were going on upon the Tuesday, and a violent conflict ensued, which lasted for a considerable time. The writers of the time are divided as to the blameable parties; the monks being accused of aiding and abetting their servants in doing wrong, andvexingthe people; the citizens, in their turn, being condemned for transgressing the recognized laws which existed concerning the boundaries of the prior’s jurisdiction.
The animosities never fairly could be said to have ceased until the general destruction of all monastic power at the period of the Reformation.
One more curious extract we will make from these coroner’s rolls, remarkable as being one of the very few authentic accounts to be met with of a person being restored to life after execution.
“Walter Eye was condemned in the court of Norwich, and hung, and appeared dead, but was afterwards discovered to be alive by William, the son of Thomas Stannard; and the said Walter was carried in a coffin to the church of St. George’s, before the gate of St. Trinity, where he recovered in fifteen days, and then fled from that church to the church of the Holy Trinity, and there was, until the king upon his suit pardoned him.”
“Walter Eye was condemned in the court of Norwich, and hung, and appeared dead, but was afterwards discovered to be alive by William, the son of Thomas Stannard; and the said Walter was carried in a coffin to the church of St. George’s, before the gate of St. Trinity, where he recovered in fifteen days, and then fled from that church to the church of the Holy Trinity, and there was, until the king upon his suit pardoned him.”
It was formerly a prevalent idea that felons could only be suspended for a certain time, but this was not really the case; so far from it, Hale’s “Pleas of the Crown” asserts, “that, in case a man condemned to die, come to life after he is hanged, as the judgment is not executed till he isdead, he ought to be hung up again.”
Another anecdote, extracted from the books of the corporation, bearing a more recent date, possesses a double interest, from being connected with a memorable disturbance, dignified in local history by the title of Gladman’s Insurrection, and also from thename and rank of the lady concerned, who was grand-daughter to Chaucer, the poet, and wife of William de la Pole, who succeeded to the earldom of Suffolk upon the death of his brother Michael,a.d.1415, the second year of the reign of King Henry V.
The only liberty we shall take with the original account is to slightly abridge it, and render it in modern orthography.
Item. It was so, that Alice, Duchess, that time Countess of Suffolk, lately in person came to this city, disguised like a country house-wife. Sir Thomas Tuddenham, and two other persons, went with her, also disguised; and they, to take their disports, went out of the city one evening, near night, so disguised, towards a hovel called Lakenham Wood, to take the air, and disport themselves, beholding the said city. One Thomas Ailmer, of Norwich, esteeming in his conceit that the said duchess and Sir Thomas had been other persons, met them, and opposed their going out in that wise, and fell at variance with the said Sir Thomas, so that they fought; whereby the said duchess was sore afraid; by cause whereof the said duchess and Sir Thomas took a displeasure against the city, notwithstanding that the mayor of the city at that time being, arrested Thomas Ailmer, and held him in prison more than thirty weeks without bail; to the intent thereby both to chastise Ailmer, and to appeasethe displeasure of the said duchess and Sir Thomas; and also the said mayor arrested and imprisoned all other persons which the said duchess and Sir Thomas could understand had in any way given favour or comfort to the said Ailmer, in making the affray. Notwithstanding which punishment, the displeasure of the duchess and Sir Thomas was not appeased. And it is so, moreover, that one John Haydon, late was recorder of the city, taking of the mayor and citizens a reasonable fee, as the recorder is accustomed; he, being so recorded, had interlaced himself with the prior of Norwich, at that time beingin traverswith the said mayor and commonality, and discovered the privity of the evidence of the said city to the said prior, because whereof the mayor and commons of the said city discharged the said Haydon of the condition of recorder; for which Haydon took a displeasure against the said city.