The presentation from Riccall carries us back into the old times, and enables us to realise a picturesque and curious incident in their primitive mode of life. A little consideration will enable us to see how such a practice arose, and how it could be tolerated by people who had at least so much respect for religion as to come to church on Sundays and holidays. When we call to mind the state of the country districts, halfreclaimed, half covered with forest and marsh and common, traversed chiefly by footpaths and bridle-roads, we shall understand how isolated a life was led by the inhabitants of the country villages and hamlets, and farmhouses and out-lying cottages. It was only on Sundays and holidays that neighbours met together. On those days the goodman mounted one of his farm-horses, put his dame behind him on a pillion, and jogged through deep and miry ways to church, while the younger and poorer came sauntering along the footpaths. One may now stand in country churchyards on a Sunday afternoon, and watch the people coming in all directions, across the fields, under copse, and over common, climbing the rustic styles, crossing the rude bridge formed by a tree-trunk thrown over the sparkling trout-stream, till all the lines converge at the church porch. And one has felt that those paths—many of them ploughed up every year and made every year afresh by the feet of the wayfarer—are among the most venerable relics of ancient times. And here among the ancient laws of Wales is one which assures us that our conjecture is true: “Every habitation,” it says, “ought to have two good paths (convenient right of road), one to its church, and one to its watering-place.” Very pleasant in summer these church-paths to the young folks who saunter along them in couples or in groups, but very disagreeable in wet wintery weather, and in difficult at all times to the old and infirm. Another presentation out of the York Fabric Rolls, gives us a contemporary picture of these church paths, seen under a gloomy aspect: InA.D.1472, the people of Haxley complain to the Archdeacon that they “inhabit so unresonablie fer from ther parisch cherche that the substaunce (majority) of the said inhabitauntes for impotensaye and feblenes, farrenes (farness == distance) of the way, and also for grete abundance of waters and perlouse passages at small brigges for peple in age and unweldye, between them and ther next parische cherche, they may not come with ese or in seasonable tyme at ther saide parische cherche as Cristen people should, and as they wold,” and so they pray for leave and help for a chaplain of their own.
We must remember, too, that our ante-Reformation forefathers did not hold modern doctrines concerning the proper mode of observing Sundays and holydays. They observed them more in the way which makes us stillcall a day of leisure and recreation a “holiday;” they observed them all in much the same spirit as we still observe some of them, such as Christmas-day and Whitsuntide. When they had duly served God atmatinsand mass, they thought it no sin to spend the rest of the day in lawful occupations, and rather laudable than otherwise to spend it in innocent recreations. The Riccall presentation gives us a picture which, no doubt, might have been seen in many another country-place on a Sunday or saint-day. The pedlar lays down his pack in the church-porch—and we will charitably suppose assists at the service—and then after service he is ready to spread out his wares on the bench of the porch before the eyes of the assembled villagers and make his traffickings, ecclesiastical canons to the contrary notwithstanding, and so save himself many a weary journey along the devious ways by which his customers have to return in the evening to their scattered homes. The complaint of the churchwardens does not seem to be directed against the traffic so much as against its being conducted in the consecrated precincts. Let the pedlar transfer his wares to the steps of the village-cross, and probably no one would have complained; but then, though they who wanted anything might have sought him there, he would have lost the chance of catching the eye of those who did not want anything, and tempting them to want and buy—a course for which we must not blame our pedlar too much, since we are told it is the essence of commerce, on a large as on a small scale, to create artificial wants and supply them.
In the late thirteenth-century MS. Royal, 10 Ed. IV., are some illuminations of a mediæval story, which afford us very curious illustrations of a pedlar and his pack. At f. 149, the pedlar is asleep under a tree, and monkeys are stealing his pack, which is a large bundle, bound across and across with rope, with a red strap attached to the rope by which it is slung over the shoulder. On the next page the monkeys have opened the wrapper, showing that it covered a kind of box, and the mischievous creatures are running off with the contents, among which we can distinguish a shirt and some circular mirrors. On f. 150, the monkeys have conveyed their spoil up into the tree, and we make out a purse and belt, a musical pipe, a belt and dagger, a pair of slippers, a hood and gloves, and a mirror. On thenext page, a continuation of the same subject, we see a pair of gloves, a man’s hat, a woman’s head-kerchief; and again, on p. 151, we have, in addition, hose, a mirror, a woman’s head-dress, and a man’s hood. These curious illuminations sufficiently indicate the usual contents of a pedlar’s pack.
Pack-horses.
In the Egerton MS., 1,070, of the fourteenth century, at f. 380, is a representation of the flight into Egypt, in which Joseph is represented carrying a round pack by a stick over the shoulder, which probably illustrates the usual mode of carrying a pack or a pedestrian’s personal luggage. Other illustrations of the pedlar of the latter part of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries will be found in the series of the Dance of Death.
A former illustration has shown us a pack-horse and mule, the means by which those itinerant traders chiefly carried their merchandise over the country. But some kinds of goods would not bear packing into ordinary bundles of the kind there shown; for such goods, boxes or trunks, slung on each side of a pack-saddle, were used. We are able to give an illustration of them from an ancient tapestry figured in the fine work on “Anciennes Tapisseries” by Achille Jubinal. It is only a minor incident in the background of the picture, but is represented with sufficient clearness. Another mode of carrying personal baggage is represented in the fifteenth-century MS. Royal, 15 E. V., where a gentleman travelling on horseback is followed by two servants, each with a large roll of baggage strapped to the croupe of his saddle. The use of pack-horses has not even yet (or had not a few years ago) utterly died out of England. The writer saw a string of them in the Peak of Derbyshire, employed in carrying ore from the mines. The occasional occurrence of the pack-horse as the sign of a roadside inn also helps to keep alive the remembrance of this primitive form of “luggage-train.” Many of our readers may have travelled with a valise at their saddle-bow and a cloak strapped to the croupe; the fashion, even now, is not quite out of date.
COSTUME.
We have, in a former chapter, given some pictures from illuminated MSS., in illustration of the costume and personal appearance of the merchants of the Middle Ages; but they are on such a scale as not to give much characteristic portraiture—except in the example of the bourgeoise of Paris, in the illumination from Froissart, on page 492—and they inadequately represent the minute details of costume. We shall endeavour in this chapter to bring our men more vividly before the eye of the reader in dress and feature.
The “Catalogus Benefactorum” of St. Alban’s Abbey, to which we have been so often indebted, will again help us with some pictures of unusual character. They are of the fourteenth century, and illustrate people of the burgess class who were donors to the abbey; the peculiarity of the representation is, that they are half-length portraits on an unusually large scale for MS. illuminations. When we call them portraits, we do not mean absolutely to assert that the originals sat for their pictures, and that the artist tried to make as accurate a portrait as he could; but it is probable that the donations were recorded and the pictures executed soon after the gifts were made, therefore, presumedly, in the lifetime of the donors. It is, moreover, probable that the artist was resident in the monastery or in the dependent town, and was, consequently, acquainted with the personal appearance of his originals; and in that case, even if the artist had not his subjects actually before his eyes at the time he painted these memorials, it is likely that he would, at least from recollection, give a generalvraisemblanceto hisportrait. The faces are very dissimilar, and all have a characteristic expression, which confirms us in the idea that they are not mere conventional portraits.
They seem to be chiefly tradespeople rather than merchants of the higher class, and of the latter half of the fourteenth century. Here, for example, are William Cheupaign and his wife Johanna, who gave to the Abbey-church two tenements in the Halliwelle Street. One of the tenements is represented in the picture, a single-storied house of timber, thatched, with a carved stag’s head as a finial to its gable. This William also gave, for the adornment of the church, several frontals, with gold, roses embroidered on a black ground; also he gave a belt to make amorse(fastening or brooch) for the principal copes, with a figure of a swan in themorse, beautifully made of goldsmith’s work; also he gave to the refectory a wooden drinking-bowl or cup, handsomely ornamented with silver, with a cover of the same wood. He wears a green hood lined with red; his wife is habited in a white hood.
William and Johanna Cheupaign.
The next picture represents Johanna de Warn, who also gave what is described as a well-built house, with a louvre, in St. Alban’s town. This house, again, is of timber, with traceried windows, an arched doorway with ornamental hinges to the door, and an unusually large and handsome louvre. This louvre was doubtless in the roof of the hall, and probably over a fire-hearth in the middle of the hall, such as that which still exists in the fourteenth-centuryhall at Pevensey, Kent. The lady’s face is strong corroboration of the theory that these are portraits.
Johanna de Warn.
Next is the portrait of a man in a robe, fastened in front with great buttons, and a hood drawn round a strongly marked face, reminding us altogether of the portraits of Dante.
A Gentleman in Civilian Dress.
The last which we take from this curious series is the picture of William de Langley, who gave to the monastery a well-built house in Dagnale Street, in the town of St. Alban’s, for which the monastery received sixty shillings per annum, which Geoffrey Stukeley held at the time of writing. William de Langley is a man of regular features, partly bald, with pointed beard and moustache, the kind of face that might so easily have been merely conventional, but which has really much individuality of expression. The house—his benefaction—represented beside him, is a two-storied house; three of the square compartments just under the eaves are seen, by the colouring of the illumination, to be windows; it is timber-built and tiled, and the upper story overhangs the lower. The gable is finished with a weather-vane, which, in the original, is carried beyond the limits of the picture. The dots in the empty spaces of all these pictures are the diapering of the coloured background.
William de Langley.
But curious as these early portraits are, and interesting for their character and for their costume, as far as they go, they still fail to give us complete illustrations of the dresses of the people. For these we shall have to resort to a class of illustrations which we have hitherto, for the mostpart, avoided—that of monumental brasses. Now we recur to them because they give us what we want—theminutiæof costume—in far higher perfection than we can find it elsewhere. Again, instead of selecting one from one part of the country and another from another, we have thought that it would add interest to the series of illustrations to take as many as possible from one church, whose grave-stones happen to furnish us with a continuous series at short intervals of the effigies of the men who once inhabited the old houses of the town of Northleach, in Gloucestershire. This series, however, does not go back so far as the earliest extant monumental brass of a merchant; we therefore take a first example from another source. We have already mentioned the three grand effigies of Robert Braunche and Adam Walsokne of Lynne, and Alan Fleming of Newark; we select from them the effigy of Robert Braunche, merchant of Lynn, of date 1367A.D.We have taken his single figure out of the grand composition which forms, perhaps, the finest monumental brass in existence. The costume is elegantly simple. A tunic reaches to the ankle, with a narrow line of embroidery at the edges; the sleeves do not reach to the elbow, but fall in two hanging lappets, while the arm is seen to be covered by the tight sleeves of an under garment, ornamented rather than fastened by a close row of buttons from the elbow to the wrist. Over the tunic is a hood, which covers the upper part of the person, while the head part falls behind. The hood in this example fits so tightly to the figure that the reader might, perhaps, think it doubtful whether it is really a second garment over the tunic; but in the contemporary and very similar effigy of Adam de Walsokne, it is quite clear that it is a hood. The plain leather shoes laced across the instep will also be noticed. If the reader should happen to compare this woodcut with the engraving of the same figure in Boutell’s “Monumental Brasses,” he will, perhaps, be perplexed by finding that the head here given is different from that which he will find there. We beg to assure him that our woodcut is correct. Mr. Boutell’s artist, by some curious error, has given to his drawing of Braunche the head of Alan Fleming of Newark; and to Fleming he has given Braunche’s head.
We feel quite sure that every one of artistic feeling will be thankful forbeing made acquainted with the accompanying effigy of a merchant of Northleach, whose inscription is lost, and his name, therefore, unknown. The brass is of the highest merit as a work of art, and has been very carefully and accurately engraved, and is worthy of minute examination. The costume, which is of about the year 1400A.D., it will be seen, consists of a long robe buttoned down the front, girded with a highly-ornamented belt; the enlarged plate at the end of the strap is ornamented with a T, probably the initial of the wearer’s Christian name. By his side hangs theanlace, or dagger, which was worn by all men of the middle class who did not wear a sword, even by the secular clergy. Over all is a cloak, which opens at the right side, so as to give as much freedom as possible to the right arm, and to this cloak is attached a hood, which falls over the shoulders. The hands are covered with half gloves. The wool-pack at his feet shows his trade of wool-merchant. Over the effigy is an elegant canopy, which it is not necessary for our purpose to give, but it adds very much to the beauty and sumptuousness of the monument.
Robert Braunche,of Lynn.
Wool Merchant fromNorthleach Church.
Next in the series is John Fortey,A.D.1458, whose costume is not so elegant as that of the last figure, but it is as distinctly represented. The tunic is essentially the same, but shorter, reaching only to the mid-leg; with sleeves of a peculiar shape which, we know from other contemporary monuments, was fashionable at that date. It is fastened with a girdle, though a less ornamental one than that of the preceding figure, and is lined and trimmed at the wrists with fur. Very similarfigures of Hugo Bostock and his wife, in Wheathamstead Church, Herts, are of date 1435; these latter effigies are specially interesting as the parents of John de Wheathamstede, the thirty-third abbot of St. Alban’s.
John Fortey, fromNorthleach Church.
The next is an interesting figure, though far inferior in artistic merit and beauty to those which have gone before. The name here again is lost, but a fragment remaining of the inscription gives the dateMCCCC., with a blank for the completion of the date; the same is the case with the date of his wife’s death, so that both effigies may have been executed in the lifetime of the persons. The date is probably a little later than 1400. The face is so different from the previous ones that it may not be unnecessary to say that great pains have been taken to make it an accurate copy of the original, and it has been drawnand engraved by the same hand as the others. The manifest endeavour to indicate that the deceased was an elderly man, induces us to suspect that some of its peculiarity may arise from its being not a mere conventional brass, such as the monumental brass artists doubtless “kept to order,” but one specially executed with a desire to make it more nearly resemble the features of the deceased. If, as we have conjectured, it was executed in his lifetime, this, perhaps, may account for its differing from the conventional type. His dress is the gown worn by civilians at the period, with agypcire, or purse, hung at one side of his girdle, and his rosary at the other.
Wool Merchants from Northleach Church.
Lastly, we give the effigy of another nameless wool-merchant of Northleach, who is habited in a gown of rather stiffer material than the robes of his predecessors, trimmed with fur at the neck and feet and wrists. The inscription recording his name and date of death is lost, but a curious epitaph, also engraved on the brass, remains, as follows:—
“Farewell my frends, the tyde abideth no man,I am departed from hence, and so shall ye;But in this passage the best songe that I canIs requiem eternam. Now then graunte it me,When I have ended all myn adversitie,Graunte me in Puradise to have a mansion,That shed thy blode for my redemption.”
The mention of fur in these effigies suggests the restrictions in this matter imposed by the sumptuary laws by which the king and his advisers sought from time to time to restrain the extravagance of the lieges. By the most important of these acts, passed in 1362, the Lord Mayor of London and his wife were respectively allowed to wear the array of knights bachelors and their wives; the aldermen and recorder of London, and the mayors of other cities and towns, that of esquires and gentlemen having property to the yearly value of £40. No man having less than this, or his wife or daughter, shall wear any fur of martrons (martin’s?) letuse, pure grey, or pure miniver. Merchants, citizens, and burgesses, artificers and people of handicraft, as well within the City of London as elsewhere, having goods and chattels of the clear value of £500, are allowed to dress like esquires and gentlemen of £100 a year; and thosepossessing property to the amount of £1,000, like landed proprietors of £200 a year.
There are some further features in these monumental brasses worth notice. Knightly effigies often have represented at their feet lions, the symbols of their martial courage. Some of our wool-merchants have a sheep at their feet, as the symbol of their calling: one is given in the woodcut accompanying. In another, in the same church, the merchant has one foot on a sheep and the other on a wool-pack; here the two significant symbols are combined—the sheep stands on the wool-pack. In both examples the wool-pack has a mark upon it; in the former case it is something like the usual “merchant’s mark,” in the latter it is two shepherds’ crooks, which seem to be his badge, for another crook is laid beside the wool-pack. At the feet of the effigy of John Fortey, p. 523, is also his merchant’s mark enclosed in an elegant wreath, here represented. The initials I and F are the initials of his name; the remainder of the device is his trade-mark. We give two other merchants’ marks of the two last of our series of effigies. If the reader cares to see other examples of these marks, and to learn all the little that is known about them, he may refer to a paper by Mr. Ewing, in vol. iii. of “Norfolk Archæology.”
We have in a former chapter (p. 498) given from his monumental brass a figure of Alderman Field, of the date 1574, habited in a tunic edged with fur, girded at the waist, with agypcireand rosary at the girdle, and over all an alderman’s gown. In St. Paul’s Church, Bedford, is another brass of Sir William Harper, Knight, Alderman, and Lord Mayor of London,[417]who died inA.D.1573; he wears a suit of armour of that date, with an alderman’s robe forming a drapery about the figure, but thrown back so as to conceal as little of the figure as possible. In the Abbey Church at Shrewsbury is an effigy of a mayor of that town in armour, with a mayor’s gown of still more modern shape. The brasses of Sir M. Rowe, Lord Mayor of London, 1567, and Sir H. Rowe, Lord Mayor 1607, both kneeling figures, formerly in Hackney Church, are engraved in Robinson’s history of that parish. And in many of the churches in and about London, and other of the great commercial towns of the Middle Ages, monumental effigies exist, with which, were it necessary, we might extend these notes of illustrations of civic costume.
In further explanation of civil costume from MSS. illuminations we refer the artist to the Harleian “Romance of the Rose” (Harl. 4,425, f. 47), where he will find a beautiful drawing, in which appears a man in a long blue gown, open a little at the breast and showing a pink under-robe, a black hat, and a liripipe of the kind already given in the citizens of Paris p. 54; he wears his purse by his side, and is presenting money to a beggar. At f. 98 is another in similar costume, with a “penner” at his belt in addition to his purse. There is nothing to prove that these men are merchants, except that they are represented in the streets of a town, and that their costume is such as was worn by merchants of the time.
With these costumes of civilians before our eyes we wish to use them in illustration of a subject which was touched upon in a former section of this work, viz., the Secular Clergy of the Middle Ages. We there devoted some pages to a discussion of the ordinary every-day costume of the clergy, and stated that there was no professional peculiarityabout it, but that it was in shape like that worn by contemporary civilians of the better class, and in colour blue and red and other colours, but seldom black. If the reader will turn back to pp. 244, 245, and 246, he will find some woodcuts of the clergy in ordinary costume; let him compare them now with these costumes of merchants. For example, take the woodcut of Roger the Chaplain, on p. 245, and compare it with the brass from Northleach, p. 522. The style of art is very different, but in spite of this the resemblance in costume will be readily seen; the gown reaching to the ankle, and over it the cloak fastened with three buttons at the right shoulder, with the hood falling back over the shoulders; the half-gloves are the same in both, and the shoes with their latchet over the instep. Then turn to the priest on p. 246, and it will be seen that he wears the gown girded at the waist, with a purse hung at the girdle, and the flat cap with long liripipe, which we have described in the costumes of these merchants. Lastly, let the reader look at these brasses of wool-staplers, and compare the gown they wore with the cassock now adopted by the clergy, and it will be seen that they are identical—i.e.the clergy continue to wear the gown which all civilians wore three or four hundred years ago; and in the same manner the academic gown which the clergy wear, in common with all university men, is only the gown which all respectable citizens wore in the time of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.
MEDIÆVAL TOWNS.
Mediæval towns in England had one of four origins; some were those of ancient Roman foundation, which had lived through the Saxon invasion, like Lincoln, Chester, and Colchester. Others again grew up gradually in the neighbourhood of a monastery. The monastery was founded in a wilderness, but it had a number of artisans employed about it; travellers resorted to itshospitiumas to an inn; it was perhaps a place of pilgrimage; the affairs of the Lord Abbot, and the business of the large estates of the convent, brought people constantly thither; and so gradually a town grew up, as at St. Alban’s, St. Edmundsbury, &c. In other cases it was not a religious house, but a castle of some powerful and wealthy lord, which drew a population together under the shelter of its walls—as at Norwich, where the lines of the old streets follow the line of the castle-moat; or Ludlow, on the other side of the kingdom, which gathered round the Norman Castle of Ludlow. But there is a third category of mediæval towns which did not descend from ancient times, or grow by accidental accretion in course of time, but were deliberately founded and built in the mediæval period for specific purposes; and in these we have a special interest from our present point of view.
There was a period, beginning in the latter part of the eleventh and extending to the close of the fourteenth century, when kings and feudal lords, from motives of high policy, fostered trade with anxious care; encouraged traders with countenance, protection, and grants of privileges; and founded commercial towns, and gave them charters which made them littleindependent, self-governing republics, in the midst of the feudal lords and ecclesiastical communities which surrounded them.
In England we do not find so many of these newly founded towns as on the Continent; here towns were already scattered abundantly over the land, and what was needed was to foster their growth; but our English kings founded such towns in their continental dominions. Edward I. planted numerous free towns, especially in Guienne and Aquitaine, in order to raise up a power in his own interest antagonistic to that of the feudal lords. Other continental sovereigns did the same,e.g.Alphonse of Poitiers, the brother of St. Louis, in his dominion of Toulouse. But in England we have a few such cases. The history of the foundation of Hull will afford us an example. When Edward I. was returning from Scotland after the battle of Dunbar, he visited Lord Wakes of Barnard Castle. While hunting one day, he was led by the chase to the hamlet of Wyke-upon-Hull, belonging to the convent of Meaux. The king perceived at once the capabilities of the site for a fortress for the security of the kingdom, and a port for the extension of commerce. He left the hunt to take its course, questioned the shepherds who were on the spot about the depth of the river, the height to which the tides rose, the owner of the place, and the like. He sent for the Abbot of Meaux, and exchanged with him other lands for Wyke. Then he issued a proclamation offering freedom and great commercial privileges to all merchants who would build and inhabit there. He erected there a manor-house for himself; incorporated the town as a free borough in 1299A.D.; by 1312 the great church was built; by 1322 the town was fortified with a wall and towers; and the king visited it from time to time on his journeys to the north. The family of De la Pole, who settled there from the first, ably seconded the king’s intentions. Kingston-upon-Hull became one of the great commercial towns of the kingdom. The De la Poles rose rapidly to wealth and the highest rank. Michael de la Pole “builded a goodly-house of brick, against the west end of St. Mary’s Church, like a palace, with a goodly orchard and garden at large, enclosed with brick. He builded also three houses in the town besides, whereof every one hath a tower of brick.” Leland the antiquary, of the time of Queen Elizabeth, has left us a description and bird’s-eyeplan of the town in his day, which is highly interesting. Of our English towns, those which are of Roman origin were laid out at first on a comprehensive plan, and they have the principal streets tolerably straight, and crossing at right angles. The great majority of the towns which grew as above described are exceedingly irregular; but this irregularity, so important an element in the picturesqueness of mediæval towns, is quite an accidental one. When the mediæval builders laid out a townde novo, they did it inthe most methodical manner; laying out the streets wide, straight, at equal distances, and crossing rectangularly; appropriating proper sites for churches, town-halls, and other public purposes, and regulating the size and plan of the houses. It is to the continental towns we must especially look for examples; but we find when Edward I. was building his free towns there, he sent for Englishmen to lay them out for him. A similar opportunity occurred at Winchelsea, where the same plan was pursued. The old town of Winchelsea was destroyed by the sea in 1287, and the king determined to rebuild this cinque-port. The chief owners of the new site were a knight, Sir J. Tregoz, one Maurice, and the owners of Battle Abbey. The king compounded with them for their rights over seventy acres of land, and sent down the Bishop of Ely, who was Lord Treasurer, to lay out the new town. The monarch accorded the usual privileges to settlers, and gave help towards the fortifications. The town was laid out in streetswhich divided the area into rectangular blocks; two blocks were set apart for churches, and there were two colleges of friars within the town. Somehow the place did not flourish; it was harried by incursions of the French before the fortifications were completed, people were not attracted to it, the whole area was never taken up, and it continues to this day shrunk up into one corner of its walled area. Three of the old gates, and part of the walls, and portions of three or four houses, are all that remain of King Edward’s town.
View of Jerusalem.
The Canterbury Pilgrims.
The woodcut on the preceding page, from a MS. of Lydgate’s “Storie of Thebes” (Royal 18 D. II.), gives a general view of a town. The travellers in the foreground are a group of Canterbury pilgrims.
In these mediæval times the population of these towns was not so diverse as it afterwards became; the houses were of various classes, from that of the wealthy merchant, which was a palace—like that of Michael de la Pole at Hull, or that of Sir John Crosby in London—down to the cottage of the humble craftsman, but the mediæval town possessed no such squalid quarters as are to be found in most of our modern towns. The inhabitants were chiefly merchants, manufacturers, and craftsmen of the various guilds. Just as in the military order, all who were permanently attached to the service of a feudal lord were lodged in his castle or manor and its dependencies; as all who were attached to a religious community were lodged in and about the monastery; as in farm-houses, a century ago, the labouring men lived in the house; so in towns all the clerks, apprentices, and work-people lodged in the house of their master; the apprentices of every craftsman formed part of his family; there were no lodgings in the usual sense of the word. In the great towns, and especially in the suburbs, were hostelries which received travellers, adventurers, minstrels, and all the people who had no fixed establishment; and often in the outskirts of the town without the walls, houses of inferior kind sprang up like parasites, and harboured the poor and dangerous classes.
The bird’s-eye views of the county towns in the corners of Speed’sMaps of the most famous Places of the World, are well worth study. They give representations of the condition of many of our towns in the time of Elizabeth, while they were still for the most part in their ancient condition,with walls and gates, crosses, pillories, and maypoles still standing, and indicated in the engravings. Perhaps one of the most perfect examples we have left of a small mediæval town is Conway; it is true, no very old houses appear to be left in it, but the streets are probably on their old lines, and the walls and gates are perfect—the latter, especially, giving us some picturesque features which we do not find remaining in the gates of other towns. Taken in combination with the adjoining castle it is architecturally one of the most unchanged corners of England.
We have also a few old houses still left here and there, sufficient to form a series of examples of various dates, from the twelfth century downwards. We must refer the reader to Turner’s “Domestic Architecture” for notices of them. A much greater number of examples, and in much more perfect condition, exist in the towns of the Continent, for which reference should be made to Viollet le Duc’s “Dictionary of Architecture.” All that our plan requires, and our space admits, is to give a general notion of what a citizen’s house in a mediæval town was like. The houses of wealthy citizens were no doubt mansions comparable with the unembattled manor-houses of the country gentry. We have already quoted Leland’s description of that of Michael de la Pole at Hull, of the fourteenth century, and Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate Street. St. Mary’s Hall, at Coventry, is a very perfect example of the middle of the fifteenth century. Norwich also possesses one or more houses of this character. The house of an ordinary citizen had a narrow frontage, and usually presented its gable to the street; it had very frequently a basement story, groined, which formed a cellar, and elevated the first floor of the house three or four feet above the level of the street. At Winchelsea the vaulted basements of three or four of the old houses remain, and show that the entrance to the house was by a short stone stair alongside the wall; under these stairs was the entrance into the cellar, beside the steps a window to the cellar, and over that the window of the first floor. Here, as was usually the case, the upper part of the house was probably of wood, and it was roofed with tiles. On the first floor was the shop, and beside it an alley leading to the back of the house, and to a straight stair which gave access to the building over the shop, which was a hallor common living-room occupying the whole of the first floor. The kitchen was at the back, near the hall, or sometimes the cooking was done in the hall itself. A private stair mounted to the upper floor, which was the sleeping apartment, and probably was often left in one undivided garret; the great roof of the house was a wareroom or storeroom, goods being lifted to it by a crane which projected from a door in the gable. The town of Cluny possesses some examples, very little modernised, of houses of this description of the twelfth century. Others of the thirteenth century are at St. Antonin, and in the Rue St. Martin, Amiens. Others of subsequent date will be found in the Dictionary of Viollet le Duc, vol. vi., pp. 222-271, who gives plans, elevations, and perspective sketches which enable us thoroughly to understand and realise these picturesque old edifices. Our own country will supply us with abundance of examples of houses, both of timber and stone, of the fifteenth century. Nowhere, perhaps, are there better examples than at Shrewsbury, where they are so numerous, in some parts (e.g.in the High Street and in Butcher Row), as to give a very good notion of the picturesque effect of a whole street—of a whole town of them. But it must be admitted that the continental towns very far exceed ours in their antiquarian and artistic interest. In the first place, the period of great commercial prosperity occurred in these countries in the Middle Ages, and their mediæval towns were in consequence larger and handsomer than ours. In the second place, there has been no great outburst of prosperity in these countries since to encourage the pulling down the mediæval houses to make way for modern improvements; while in England our commercial growth, which came later, has had the result of clearing away nearly all of our old town-houses, except in a few old-fashioned places which were left outside the tide of commercial innovations. In consequence, a walk through some of the towns of Normandy will enable the student and the artist better to realise the picturesque effect of an old English town, than any amount of diligence in putting together the fragments of old towns which remain to us. In some of the German towns, also, we find the old houses still remaining, apparently untouched, and the ancient walls, mural towers, and gateways still surrounding them. Theilluminations in MSS. show that English towns were equally picturesque, and that the mediæval artists appreciated them. The illustrations in our last chapter on pp. 519, 520, give an idea of the houses inhabited by citizens in such a town as St. Alban’s. In the “Roman d’Alexandre,” in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a whole street of such houses is rudely represented, some with the gable to the street, some with the side, all with the door approached by an exterior stair, most of them with the windows apparently unglazed, and closed at will by a shutter. We might quote one MS. after another, and page after page. We will content ourselves with noting, for exterior views, the Royal MS. 18 E. V. (dated 1473A.D.), at 3 E. V., f. 117 v., a town with bridge and barbican, and the same still better represented at f. 179; and we refer also to Hans Burgmaier’s “Der Weise Könige,” which abounds in picturesque bits of towns in the backgrounds of the pictures. For exteriors the view of Venice in the “Roman d’Alexandre” is full of interest, especially as we recognise that it gives some of the remaining features—the Doge’s Palace, the Cathedral, the columns in the Piazzeta—and it is therefore not merely a fancy picture, as many of the town-views in the MS. are, which are supposed to represent Jerusalem,[418]Constantinople, and other cities mentioned in the text. This Venice view shows us that at that time the city was lighted by lanterns hung at the end of poles extended over the doors of the houses. It gives us a representation of a butcher’s shop and other interesting features.
A Mediæval Street and Town Hall.
The illustration on the preceding page is also a very interesting street-view of the fifteenth century, from a plate in Le Croix and Seré’s “Moyen Age,” vol. Corporations et Metiers, Plate 8. Take first the right-hand side of the engraving, remove the forest of picturesque towers and turrets with their spirelets and vanes which appear over the roofs of the houses (in which the artist has probably indulged his imagination as to the effect of the other buildings of the town beyond), and we have left a sober representation of part of a mediæval street—a row of lofty timber houses with their gables turned to the street. We see indications of the usual way of arranging the timber frame-work in patterns; there are also indications ofpargeting (e.g.raised plaster ornamentation) and of painting in some of the panels. On the ground-floor we have a row of shops protected by a projecting pent-house; the shop-fronts are open unglazed arches, with a bench across the lower part of the arch for a counter, while the goods are exposed above. In the first shop the tradesman is seen behind his counter ready to cry “what d’ye lack” to every likely purchaser; at the second shop is a customer in conversation with the shopkeeper; at the third the shopkeeper and his apprentice seem to be busy displaying their goods. Some of the old houses in Shrewsbury, as those in Butcher Row, are not unlike these, and especially their shops are exactly of this character. When we turn to the rest of the engraving we find apparently some fine building in which, perhaps, again the artist has drawn a little upon vague recollections of civic magnificence, and his perspective is not quite satisfactory. Perhaps it is some market-house or guildhall, or some such building, which is represented; with shops on the ground-floor, and halls and chambers above. The entrance-door is ornamented with sculpture, the panels of the building are filled with figures, which are either painted or executed in plaster, in relief. The upper part of the building is still unfinished, and we see the scaffolds, and the cranes conveying mortar and timber, and the masons yet at work. In the shop on the right of the building, we note the usual open shop-front with its counter, and the tradesman with a pair of scales; in the interior of the shop is an assistant who seems to be, with vigorous action, pounding something in a mortar, and so we conjecture the shop to be that of an apothecary. The costume of the man crossing the street, in long gown girded at the waist, may be compared with the merchants given in our last chapter, and with those in an engraving of a market-place at p. 499. The figure at a bench in the left-hand corner of the engraving may perhaps be one of the workmen engaged upon the building; not far off another will be seen hauling up a bucket of mortar, by means of a pulley, to the upper part of the building; the first mason seems to wear trousers, probably overalls to protect his ordinary dress from the dirt of his occupation. Of later date are the pair of views given opposite from the margin of one of the pictures in “The Alchemy Book” (Plut. 3,469) a MS. in the British Museum of early sixteenth-centurydate. The nearest house in the left-hand picture shows that the shops were still of the mediæval character; several of the houses have signs on projecting poles. There are other examples of shops in the nearest house of the right-hand picture, a public fountain opposite, and a town-gate at the end of the street. We see in the two pictures, a waggon, horsemen, and carts, a considerable number of people standing at the shops, at the doors of their houses, and passing along the street, which has no foot pavement.
Mediæval Streets.
The accompanying cut from Barclay’s “Shippe of Fools,” gives a view in the interior of a mediæval town. The lower story of the houses is of stone, the upper stories of timber, projecting. The lower stories have only small, apparently unglazed windows, while the living rooms with their oriels and glazed lattices are in the first floor. The next cut, from a MS. in the French National Library, gives the interior of the courtyard of a great house. We notice the portion of one of the towers on the left, the draw-well, the external stair to the principal rooms on the first floor, the covered unglazed gallery which formed the mode of communication from the different apartments of the first floor, and the dormer windows.
A Town, from Barclay’s Shippe of Fools.
A whole chapter might be written on the inns of mediæval England.We must content ourselves with giving references to pictures of the exterior of two country ale-houses—one in the Royal MS. 10 E. IV., at f. 114 v., which has a broom projecting over the door by way of sign; and another in the “Roman d’Alexandre” in the Bodleian—and with reproducing here two pictures of the interiors of hostelries from Mr. Wright’s “Domestic Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages.” They represent the sleeping accommodation of these ancient inns. In the first, from the “Quatre Fils d’Aymon,” a MS. romance of the latter part of the fourteenth century, in the French National Library, the beds are arranged at the side ofthe apartment in separate berths, like those of a ship’s cabin, or like the box beds of the Highlands of Scotland. It is necessary, perhaps, to explain that the artist has imagined one side of the room removed, so as to introduce into his illustration both the mounted traveller outside and the interior of the inn.
Courtyard of a House.(French National Library.)
In the next woodcut, from Royal MS. 18 D. II., the side of the hostelry next to the spectator is supposed to be removed, so as to bring under view both the party of travellers approaching through the corn-fields, and the same travellers tucked into their truckle beds and fast asleep. The sign of the inn will be noticed projecting over the door, with a brush hung from it. Many houses displayed signs in the Middle Ages; the brush was the general sign of a house of public entertainment. On the bench in the common dormitory will be seen the staves and scrips of the travellers, who are pilgrims.
An Inn.(French National Library.)
A fragment of a romance of “Floyre and Blanchefleur,” published by the Early English Text Society, illustrates the mediæval inn. We have a little modernised the very ancient original. Floris is travelling with a retinue of servants, in the hope of finding his Blanchefleur:—
“To a riche city they bothe ycome,Whaire they have their inn ynome[419]At a palais soothe riche;The lord of their inn has non his liche,[420]Him fell gold enough to honde,Bothe in water and in lande,He hadde yled his life ful wide.”
i.e.he had travelled much, had great experience of life, and had gained gold both by sea and land. Besides houses entirely devoted to the entertainment of travellers, it was usual for citizens to take travellers into their houses, and give them entertainment for profit; it would seem that Floris and his servants had “taken up their inn” at the house of a burgess; he is called subsequently, “a burgess that was wel kind and curteis:”—
“This Child he sette next his side,Glad and blithe they weren alleSo many as were in the halle;But Floris not ne drank naught,Of Blanchefleur was all his thought.”
An Inn.
The lady of the inn perceiving his melancholy, speaks to her husband about him:—
“Sire takest thou no careHow this child mourning sitMete ne drink he nabit,He net[421]mete ne he ne drinkethNis[422]he no marchaunt as me thinketh.”
From which we gather that their usual guests were merchants. The host afterwards tells Floris that Blanchefleur had been at his house a little time before, and that—
“Thus therein this other daySat Blanchefleur that faire may,In halle, ne in bower, ne at boardOf her ne herde we never a wordBut of Floris was her moneHe hadde in herte joie none.”
Floris was so rejoiced at the news, that he caused to be brought a cup of silver and a robe of minever, which he offered to his host for his news. In the morning—
“He took his leave and wende his way,And for his nighte’s gestingHe gaf his host an hundred schillinge.”
One feature of a town which requires special mention is the town-hall. As soon as a town was incorporated, it needed a large hall in which to transact business and hold feasts. The wealth and magnificence of the corporation were shown partly in the size and magnificence of its hall. Trade-guilds similarly had their guildhalls; when there was one great guild in a town, its hall was often the town-hall; when there were several, the guilds vied with one another in the splendour of their halls, feasts, pageants, &c. The town-halls on the Continent exceed ours in size and architectural beauty. That at St. Antoine, in France, is an elegant little structure of the thirteenth century. The Belgian town-halls at Bruges, &c., are well known from engravings. We are not aware of the existence ofany town-halls in England of a date earlier than the fifteenth century. That at Leicester is of the middle of the fifteenth century. The town-hall at Lincoln, over the south gate, is of the latter half of the century; that at Southampton, over the north gate, about the same date: it was not unusual for the town-hall to be over one of the gates. Of the early part of the sixteenth century we have many examples. They are all of the same type—a large oblong hall, of stone or timber, supported on pillars, the open colonnade beneath being the market-place. That at Salisbury is of stone; at Wenlock (which has been lately restored), of timber. There are others at Hereford, Ross, Leominster, Ashburton, Guildford, &c. The late Gothic Bourse at Antwerp is an early example of the cloistered, or covered courts, which, at the end of the fifteenth century, began to be built for the convenience of the merchants assembling at a certain hour to transact business. The covered bridge of the Rialto was used as the Exchange at Venice.
None of our towns have the same relative importance which belonged to them in the Middle Ages. In the latter part of the period of which we write it was very usual for the county families to have town-houses in the county town, or some other good neighbouring town, and there they came to live in the winter months. When the fashion began we hardly know. Some of the fine old timber houses remaining in Shrewsbury are said to have been built by Shropshire families for their town-houses. The gentry did not in those times go to London for “the season.” The great nobility only used to go to court, which was held three times a year; then parliament sat, the king’s courts of law were open, and the business of the nation was transacted. They had houses at the capital for their convenience on these occasions, which were called inns, as Lincoln’s Inn, &c. But it is only from a very recent period, since increased facilities of locomotion made it practicable, that it has been the fashion for all people in a certain class of society to spend “the season” in London. As a consequence the country gentry no longer have houses in the provincial towns; even the better classes of those whose occupation lies in them live in their suburbs, and the towns are rapidly changing their character, physically, socially, and morally, for the worse. London is becoming rapidlythe one great town in England. The great manufacturers have agencies in London; if people are going to furnish a house or to buy a wedding outfit they come up to London; the very artisans and rustics in search of a day’s holiday are whirled up to London in an excursion train. While London in consequence is extending so widely as to threaten to convert all England into a mere suburb of the metropolis of the British empire.