A Short History of Social Life in England/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
Circa 1399—1485
RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS
"Das Alte sturzt, es andert sich die Zeit
Und neues Leben blubt aus den Ruinen."
THE fifteenth century ushered in yet more far-reaching changes in the social condition of the people than any that had gone before. The ideas of dawning change have already been suggested, for the great fabric of the feudal system, which for over four centuries had resisted all pressure, had been hard hit by the Peasant Revolt. Now it was to fall into ruins, from which the great middle class, that "backbone of England," was to rise triumphant. And—paradoxical as it may seem—the barons themselves caused the change. At the height of their wealth, when luxury in food and dress was at its zenith and the poor were down-trodden and miserable, the heads of many great houses in England hurled themselves into a conflict, known as the Wars of the Roses, from which they never again rose to their ancient pride and splendour. While they fought, merchants and artisans, tradesmen and small landowners quietly strengthened their position, developed the industries of the country, accumulated wealth, and ushered in that new social condition that made England what she was in the Victorian era—the greatest commercial country in the world. The weary contest with France at an end, the acquirement of wealth by the middle classes tended to the comfort and improvement of the home. Beside the castle and manor-house a number of houses sprang up in town and country—houses with the addition of court and garden, with a second story containing several bedrooms instead of one, a withdrawing-room to ensure more privacy, and a parlour (parlering or speaking room) to obviate the necessity of receiving guests in the bedroom. This parlour was better furnished than the hall, which still remained somewhat bare with its plain wooden benches and long dining-table, though even here luxury was creeping in and covering the benches with cushions of damask from Damascus. A massive fireplace and chimney characterised the parlour, and a coal fire, necessitating the invention of tongs, supplemented the use of logs. Wooden benches, usually to hold three people, were attached to the walls, while the rest of the furniture included a movable wooden chair, a table on trestles, a cupboard, and curtains of "worsted," which material was now being made at the little Norfolk village of that name. This worsted supplied a substitute for the rich tapestry which still helped to keep out draughts from the large hall and added warmth and comfort to the parlour. But perhaps the most important feature of the new room was the large window recess, furnished on either side with goodly benches of stone-work, the windows glazed with small diamond-shaped panes. These recesses formed pleasant retreats for the maiden with her distaff, as also for the young squire or gallant who sought to court her, with all the romantic fervour that characterised the age. From this window, too, could be witnessed those festivities which still made the old halls ring with joyous mirth. The walls of the parlour were usually painted. For some time past it had been considered a luxury to smooth the surface of walls with cement and to panel the lower part with oak wainscoting. Above the oak were mural paintings of historical or religious subjects. From the roof, beams were suspended to hold several candles, and the floor was either paved or covered with a Spanish carpet, though rushes were still strewed in the hall as of yore.
Nevertheless, with all its obvious advantages, the parlour was looked on as an innovation by the conservatives of the fifteenth century. The growing practice of dining in "privy parlors with chimneys" is denounced by a contemporary as a degenerate luxury. "Sondrie nobil men, gentlemen, and others, doe much delighte and use to dine in corners and secret places, not repairing to the high chamber." This was the complaint of the age. Dinner was still one of the chief events of the day, though the manners at table were yet rough and ready, as may be seen by the old books of etiquette of this time. "Do not spit upon the table" is an oft repeated maxim. Among other things, we find requests "not to return back to your plate the food you have just put into your mouth; not to drink from a cup with a dirty mouth; not to offer another person the remains of your pottage; not to eat much cheese; to take only two or three nuts when they are placed before you; not to get intoxicated during dinner; not to carry the victuals to your mouth with a knife." Our forefathers still ate with their fingers; though forks, often of silver, had been introduced into England, they were only used for eating pears and fruit or for picking up "soppys."
The art of cooking had developed, and a number of manuscript cookery books throw floods of light on the domestic life of this period. Here is one of the shortest menus for a little medieval dinner—
First Course.
Boar's head larded and "bruce" for pottage.
Beef. Mutton. Legs of Pork.
Swan. Roasted Rabbit. Tart.
Second Course.
Drore and Rose for pottage.
Mallard. Pheasant. Chickens stuffed and roasted.
"Malachis" baked.
Third Course.
Rabbits in gravy and hare in "brase" for pottage.
Teals roasted. Woodcock. Snipes.
"Raviuolis" baked. Pork pies.
Each of these items needed elaborate preparation. Here is the receipt for "bruce": "Take the umbles of a swine and parboil them, and cut them small and put them in a pot with some good broth; take the whites of leeks and slit them, cut them small and put them in with mixed onions and let it all boil; next take bread steeped in broth and 'draw it up' with blood and vinegar, and put it into a pot with pepper and cloves and let it boil; serve all together." Here, too, is the receipt for "drore," which must have made a most savoury soup: "Take almonds and blanch them and mix them with good meat broth and seethe this in a pot; then mince onions and fry them in fresh 'grease' and put them to the almonds; take small birds and parboil them, and throw them into the pottage with cinnamon and cloves and a little fair grease and boil the whole."
The fifteenth century was famous for its feasts, where the consumption of food was almost incredible. Here are but some items out of a much longer list of orders for a feast in 1466: 300 tuns of ale, 100 tuns of wine, 104 oxen, 6 wild bulls, 1,000 sheep, 304 calves, 304 swine, 400 swans, 2,000 geese, 1,000 capons, 2,000 pigs, 104 peacocks, 204 kids, 2,000 chickens, 4,000 pigeons, 200 pheasants, 500 partridges, 400 woodcocks, 4,000 cold and 1,500 hot venison patties, 4,000 dishes of jelly, 4,000 baked tarts, and 2,000 hot custards, &c.
It is little wonder that the death-rate was high in the Middle Ages, and that the wealthy mostly died under the age of forty, though this was due to many causes besides the enormous consumption of meat and the almost entire absence of vegetable diet.
In the garden of this period grew very few vegetables, for England was behind France, Italy and the Low Countries in this respect. Nevertheless, the garden, hitherto restricted mostly to the monasteries, now began to be a necessary addition to the new half-timbered house that was springing up in town and country. True, there had been pleasure grounds and "pleasaunt playing places" for the ladies of the wealthy long before this—grounds with grottoes and fountains and sweet-smelling herbs; here, too, was the trellised arbour half smothered in rose and honeysuckle, vines and creeping flowers. But the fifteenth-century garden was made mainly for the purpose of supplying and flavouring foods, as well as for medicinal purposes. Thus special flowers were grown for flavouring soups, including sweet violets, corn-marigolds, red nettles, daisies, and columbine; for making sauces, there were sorrel, violets, parsley, and mint; for salads, violet flowers, parsley, red mint, cress, primrose buds, daisies, dandelion, and red fennel, to be eaten raw with olive oil and spices; the roots included parsnips, turnips, radishes, "karettes," and saffron. One great ambition of the medieval gardener was to excel in the art of grafting. They grafted vines on cherry-trees, pears on hawthorns, apples on elms. They were thoroughly ingenious, but hopelessly unpractical. "If thou wilt that in the stone of a peach be found a nut-kernal, graft a sprout of a peach-tree on the stock of a nut-tree," suggests an old gardening book; and yet again: "A peach-tree shall bring forth pomegranates if it be sprinkled with goat's milk three days when it beginneth to flower, and the apples of a peach-tree shall wax red if its scion be grafted on a playne-tree."
But if our forefathers neglected the cultivation of vegetables, they encouraged the art of fruit-growing in England. Apples and pears grew in great variety; they had medlars, figs, and cherries, quinces, plums, peaches, gooseberries, and mulberries; cultivated strawberries were yet rare, but they grew to a good size in the famous gardens at Holborn. For the most part they were eaten wild out of the woods, as we gather blackberries to-day.
Let us picture for a moment the garden of this period. There is a square enclosure bounded by walls of stone, brick, or thick-set hedge with two entrances, one opening from the house, the other into an orchard or field. It is very neatly kept and the air is sweet with fragrant herbs: at intervals there are recesses with seats and benches covered with turf, "thick-set and soft as any velvet," past which run little paths covered with sand or gravel, intersecting the garden. Surrounding the arbour are periwinkles, marigolds, lilies, wild geranium, mallow, or cowslips, daffodils, and foxgloves. Here the ladies come to gather flowers to make wreaths and garlands for their heads. We see again Chaucer's "Emilie" wandering in the garden at sunrise, her braided yellow hair hanging down in its long plait below her waist, singing out of the very lightness of her heart as she weaves a garland for her head.
The ladies of the fifteenth century were very much taken up with their head-dresses. These were truly wonderful. They were large, heavy, and ungraceful, and excited much wrath and ridicule. Some were like steeples, with long streamers hanging down from the top; they were made of rolls upon rolls of linen, towering some two feet above the head and ending in a point, not unlike an extinguisher. Some were like a bishop's mitre, immoderately broad and high, while some fastened two great projecting towers of rolled lawn and ribbon on their heads, which looked like two great horns. Indeed, so extreme and immoderate were the head-dresses that the doors of the Royal palaces had to be made higher and wider to enable the ladies to pass through. The lady of the period must have been sorely hampered and harassed by her costume, though the long trailing skirt was fast passing out of fashion. Men and women were alike adopting the doublet, or short padded jacket, pleated below the waist and fastened with a girdle laced in front across a stomacher of coloured satin, linen, tawny silk, or murrey-coloured taffeta. Enormous hanging sleeves were worn, and it is related that Edward IV. used to tie his behind his back to avoid tumbling over them as he walked. For a time pointed shoes continued to be the fashion, but soon length gave way to breadth and broad shoes came in, known as "duckbills." Leather was now used for boots and shoes, which were often double-soled, a distinct advantage, considering the deep mud of the uncleaned roads. So exaggerated and costly had dress become that in 1463 a petition was presented to Parliament against the "inordinate use of apparell and aray of men and women." The rising power and wealth of the middle classes made the nobles feel that their dignity was at stake when their fashions in dress were copied by the democracy. Laws were passed enforcing the social barrier, as far as dress was concerned. Only a lord and his wife might wear a stomacher worked in gold or sable; only a Knight of the Garter might wear velvet; small squires might not wear damask or satin; yeomen were forbidden to pad their doublets or to wear costly fur, while the labouring classes might not buy cloth above two shillings a yard, and were for the most part restricted to coarse flannel, fustian, and linen girdles.
Linen and woollen stuffs were largely used, and to encourage home manufactures Henry IV. prohibited the importation of foreign cloth. Linen sheets and blankets were used now for beds, which must have been much more comfortable than in olden times. True, the mattress or matted truss of straw was still used, but the feather bed had been recently imported from France. In an old "Guide to Servants," written in the fifteenth century, the groom of the chamber is told "the feder bed to bete, but no federys waste" On this feather bed was laid the fustian or blanket, over it the linen sheets, which still served the purpose of nightgown, and the bed was covered with a "pane" of ermine or a richly embroidered quilt Beds were handed down from generation to generation as valuable personal property, and it is interesting to remember how, at a later date, Shakspere's will is explicit on the subject of leaving his "second best bed" to his wife, though he says nothing of rights in his plays. One of our forefathers bequeaths his daughter "a feather bed next the best, a mattress lying under the same, three pairs of sheets, two pillows and a pair of blankets," while another, a rich tradesman, leaves to his niece "my green hanged bed, stained with my arms therein, that hangeth in the chamber over kitchen, with the curtains, the green covering belonging thereto; another coverlit, one pair of blankets, one pair good sheets, a great pillow and small pillow and feather bed."
With a greater degree of comfort came an exaggerated idea of luxury, which was criticised and preached against as it is to-day. But compared with the nineteenth century the luxury of the Middle Ages is indeed unenviable, and it is impossible to look back with any longing or regrets to the days of our medieval ancestors.