Mediæval Byways

II

So much is heard of the modern facilities for travelling that one might almost think that before the days of Cook (Thomas of the tickets, not the Polar Mandeville) no Englishman had ever stirred abroad. Yet it is hardly questionable that in mediæval times the proportion of Englishmen who had visited foreign lands was far larger than at the present day. Thanks to military feudalism it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries most of our country gentlemen had seen service in France, taking with them contingents of hired or pressed men from every village in the land. For the more peaceful classes there were the attractions of the pilgrimage, the spiritual advantages outweighing the dangers and hardships of a journey to Rome, and the celebrated shrine of St. James of Compostella drawing thousands every year to Spain. Still earlier the Crusades drew the pious and the martial alike yet farther afield, but of those who journeyed to the East many did not return. At all time a pretty sharp limit was set to the travels of the ordinary man by the seaboard of Palestine, and those who penetrated still deeper into the mysterious East were few. It is therefore interesting to follow Geoffrey of Langley on his embassy to the Tartar Court in 1292 and back to England, piecing together the story of his travels from the prosaic accounts of his paymaster.

Towards the end of the twelfth century the Tartars, a nomadic tribe who inhabited the district between the Caucasus and the Euphrates and professed the Christianity of the Nestorians, came into some prominence in Europe through the fame of their Khan, the celebrated ‘Prester John.’ He, however, was killed in 1203 by the terrible Genghiz Khan the Mogul, from Turkestan, whose successors adopted the name and, after one or two generations, the religion of the conquered Tartars. Argon, King or Emperor of the Tartars, accepted Christianity in 1289, and in alliance with the kings of Armenia and Georgia inflicted a severe defeat upon the forces of the Soldan. Later in the same year his ambassadors reached Europe, charged to preach a new crusade for the ejection of the Saracens from Palestine. Strengthened with commendatory letters from the Pope, they visited the English Court. King Edward made them welcome, and wrote to Argon expressing his delight at his proposed attack upon the Sultan of Babylon, and promising to come in person as soon as the Pope would sanction his going to the Holy Land. To cement the alliance he promised to send the king some gerfalcons, for which he had asked. This letter was written in September 1290, and next year the falcons were duly dispatched by the hands of Sir Geoffrey of Langley.

The embassy reached Trebizond about the middle of June 1292, and obtained quarters for themselves and the precious gerfalcons while waiting for a safe-conduct to the Tartar Court. The king’s whereabouts were uncertain, and Nicholas de Chartres, Geoffrey’s squire, and Conrad, nephew of the ambassador’s chief-of-staff, Buskerell, were sent by sea to Samsoun, and thence first to Kaisarieh and then to Sivas, where they waited for the king. At last all was ready; a tent had been made from cotton cloth and scarlet and grey material, bought in Trebizond, a parasol had been purchased for the ambassador, and a horse for him to ride, and also a mule, which cost more than three times as much as the horse. For the first stage of the journey to Tabriz, where they were to see the king, thirty horses were hired, but at Baiburt, which they reached on July 25, the number was reduced, and from Baiburt to Zaratkana only fourteen horses were employed. Beyond the giving of presents to Tartars and others, including a gift of cloth to ‘the lady’ of Erz Roum, little is recorded of the journey to Tabriz—the city of baths and iced drinks, as the Spanish ambassadors to Timour Bey found it a century later.

The embassy left Tabriz, carrying with them a leopard as a present from the Tartar king, and on Friday, September 26, reached the busy trading town of Khoi, where Gonzalez de Clavijo on his way to Samarcand in 1406 saw a giraffe, which he deemed, ‘to a man who had never seen such an animal before, a wonderful sight.’ Sunday night they spent at ‘Nosseya,’ presumably Nuskar, and Monday at a village ‘of the Armenians,’ evidently near the Lake of Van, as fish appear for the first time amongst the provisions bought, in addition to the usual bread, cheese, and fruit. At Argish on the Lake of Van boots were bought for three members of the suite, the horses were shod and stores laid in, including wine, meat, ducks, eggs, and salt. After stopping one night at ‘Jaccaon,’ Melasgird was reached, where they dismissed their mounted escort from Argish and proceeded under fresh escort through three nameless Saracen villages to Erz Roum, which they reached on Monday, October 6. A two days’ halt was made here while they laid in stores and had their clothes washed. The wear and tear of travelling began to be felt; boots had to be bought for the chaplain, John the clerk, Robert, Gerard, another Robert, and William and Martin the grooms, and a hat and shoes for Willecok. On the Wednesday night, when they stayed at another Saracen village, they were entertained by native minstrels, and the following day they reached Baiburt, where John the scullion’s boots gave out. Here they had to lay in stores, as the next two halts were to be ‘in the fields,’ away from habitations.

‘A wonderful sight.’

At last, on Monday, October 13, they found themselves back at Trebizond, where they rested for a week and invested largely in new shoes, as well as in such heavy and bulky conveniences as pots and pans, plates, dishes, and stools, with which they had had to dispense on their journey. The Saracen porters who had carried the baggage from Tabriz were paid off, a Tartar who had rendered some small service was rewarded with a carpet, and the ambassador’s suite received their wages and allowances of linen. At the head of the suite was Andrew Balaban, who received a scarlet robe in addition to his wages, and Martin the latimer, or interpreter; then there were Willecok the chamberer, John the clerk, Walter the cook, Martin Lombard the larderer, and Michael and Jonot ‘of the kitchen’; Chyzerin, Copin, and Tassin the falconers, Jacques and Oliver the grooms, Michael de Suria, Theodoric, Manfred, Gerardin, Robert, and Robekin, and one or two others of whom we learn nothing but their names. Altogether there must have been about twenty or thirty persons who sailed from Trebizond and after a slow voyage reached Constantinople on Sunday, November 9.

At Constantinople, which the accountant by an ingenious error of derivation calls ‘Constantinus Nobilis,’ the galley lay for a week, possibly delayed by adverse winds. There were compensations for the delay; oysters, hares, mallards, chestnuts, pears, and apples must have been welcome luxuries after the hardships and monotony of the past weeks, and it is possibly more than a coincidence that the doctor had to be called in to attend Richard. Even the leopard fared daintily, three chickens making a pleasant change from his usual mutton. At last everything was ready, the clothes had been washed, John the clerk’s hose had been mended, some Persian cloth had been bought for Richard’s tabard, and the parasol had been re-covered, which seems hardly necessary, unless it was to be used as an umbrella; the weather being cold, eighteen sets of wraps (muffeles) were bought for the suite, while Sir Geoffrey procured fur-lined robes of vair, gules, and white fox with a hood of ‘Alcornyne,’ and on Monday, November 17, the galley set sail for Italy.

Otranto was reached on Saturday, November 29, and here the ambassador and part of his suite landed, Richard and Robert going on at once to Brindisi by boat. The galley waited long enough to revictual and to allow of cleaning the leopard’s cage, and then went on with the rest of the suite and the heavier luggage to Genoa. On Sunday, the Bishop of Otranto having kindly lent them horses, the ambassador’s party started on their journey overland to Genoa, reaching Lecce in time for dinner and an impromptu entertainment by three minstrels. The first four days of December were spent at Brindisi, whence they went on up the east coast by Villanuova and Mola to Barletta, then turning inland to ‘Tres Sanctos,’ which may have been Trinitapoli, but was chiefly noteworthy for a dinner of chicken, pigeons, and sausages. Next morning, Wednesday, December 10, they lunched at San Lorenzo on their way to Troja, and so, past ‘Crevaco’ to ‘Bonum Albergum,’ which, if it was not Benevento, was not far from that town. Two days more brought them, by Monte Sarchio and Acerra, to Naples, where they remained until Thursday, the 18th. Here they were once more in a land of plenty and could feast on pheasants, partridges, mallards, hares, and pigeons, skilfully seasoned with sage and parsley, garlic, and saffron. Two mules and a dappled grey horse were bought, as well as some glasses and earthenware pots and mugs, and the party set out for Capua, sending their silver plate on ahead by the hands of Manfred Oldebrand. At Capua, on Friday, December 19, Tassin the falconer died, much regretted by his brother falconer, Hanekin, to whom he owed 11s. 4d., and offerings were made for the good of his soul.

‘An impromptu entertainment by three minstrels.’

Five days’ march, through Mignano, Ceprano, Anagni, and a place called ‘Mulera,’ which I cannot identify, brought them to Rome. At Rome they spent Christmas. A doctor was called in to attend one of the grooms, and medicine was obtained for a horse, possibly without avail, as two horses were bought for thirty florins, from ‘the merchants of the Ricardi.’ On Sunday, the 28th, the journey was resumed, Isola and Sutri forming the first day’s march, Viterbo and Monte Fiascone the second. Acquapendente was reached on Tuesday, and here they spent 18d. on ‘a small box (cofinello) in which to carry eel pies.’ Passing San Quirico, Siena was reached on the 1st of January, their road after that leading through San Cossiano, Pistoia, and Buggione, to Lucca. From Lucca they struck across to the coast, through Avenza and Sarzana to Sestri, and so up by Rapallo and Recco to Genoa, which they reached on Sunday, January 11. At Genoa they found their companions, who had come round by sea. A house was hired from Pucino Roncini, the galley was unloaded and paid off, its cost from Trebizond to Genoa being £200, a sum more formidable in appearance than in reality, as the Genoese pound was only about 3s. 6d. of English money. Tamorace the Tartar was dismissed with the present of a silver cup, and there remained only the leopard to link them with the East.

At Genoa the series of accounts terminates, but the dispatch of a messenger to the Marquess of Saluzzo suggests that our travellers were going through his territory, by the same road that Henry of Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby and afterwards King of England, followed just a century later on his return from Venice and the East, taking with him, by a coincidence, a leopard. In that case they would have gone inland, past Novi, Asti, and Turin to Chambéry in Savoy, then northwards to Châlons, and by Beaune, Châtillon, and Nogent-sur-Saône to Paris. Thence they would probably have made for Wissant, and so across to Dover, reaching England about the beginning of September, 1293, or rather earlier, after two years of almost continual travelling. Of the wonderful things that they saw, and the yet more wonderful things that they heard—tales of monstrous men, uncanny beasts, and evil spirits—of their adventures, perils of shipwreck, and perils of robbers, no record has survived; but something of their slow journeying, the trying desert marches, the vexatious delays of contrary winds, pleasantly varied by the relaxation of a halt in some great city, we have managed to piece together.

Such exceptional voyages as those of Geoffrey of Langley to Tabriz or of Gonzalez de Clavijo to Samarcand are interesting for their rarity; but a value of another kind attaches to the embassy of Hugh de Vere to the Papal Court in 1298. It was a placid and uneventful journey, and would seem to have been not merely without adventures, but without incidents. Beyond the trifling worries attendant on pack saddles and harness that required constant repairs, the trifling interest derived from varying changes of diet, and the complication of accounts caused by the existence of an entirely fresh monetary standard in each state through which the travellers passed, there was little to record but the list of stages on the journey. As, however, the route followed was the main road to Rome, along which passed a constant stream of pilgrims, prompted by piety or a wish to see the world—priests seeking benefices for themselves or curses for their neighbours; penitents desiring absolution; appellants with their wallets stuffed with deeds, decrees, and legal precedents, and their appellees carrying the weightier argument of English gold—it is worth while following the embassy and noting the stopping-places. Most of these are identical with those used by Henry of Bolingbroke on his return from Venice almost a century later, and were, therefore, evidently the usual stages on this road.

Pilgrims.

Hugh de Vere and his suite, consisting of two knights, two chaplains, a clerk, ten esquires, and some thirty grooms and other attendants, assembled at Paris on Good Friday, April 4, 1298, and next day rode as far as Rozoy, contenting themselves on the journey, as it was a fast day, with fish and fruit. The next day being Easter Sunday they did not start until after dinner, but reached Provins, fifty miles south-east of Paris, in the evening. From Provins of the Roses the cavalcade passed by Pavillon down the valley of the Seine to Bar-sur-Seine, where, Lent being over, they feasted on meat and pies and flauns, a kind of mediæval pancake particularly popular at Easter-time, according to Haliwell. They soon entered Burgundy, and turning south through Montbard followed for some distance the route now taken by the Canal de Bourgogne with its innumerable locks, and after halting a night at ‘Flori’—which occurs in Bolingbroke’s account as ‘Floreyn,’ but would seem to have dwindled out of the maps if not out of existence—reached Beaune; and still doing an average of thirty miles a day came to Lyons, stopping at Tournus and Bellville on the way, on Monday, April 14. After following the valley of the Rhone a few miles farther south, they turned off eastwards near Vienne through St. Georges to Voiron and thence northwards, passing close to the Grande Chartreuse, across the borders of Savoy to Chambéry. So far the currency in use had been ‘neir Turneis,’ or black money of Tours, 14d. of ‘petit tournois’ being equivalent to one ‘gros tournois,’ the standard to which all other denominations are reduced in these accounts, a coin worth approximately 3d. sterling; but now and all the way through Savoy and Piedmont payments are entered in ‘Vieneys,’ of which seventeen went to the ‘gros tournois.’

Through the mountainous district of Savoy progress was markedly slower, the sixty miles from Chambéry to Susa taking six days. The road by which they travelled followed the valley of the Arc, as does the modern railway, past Montmélian, la Chambre, and St. Michel; but as the Mont Cenis tunnel had not then been completed the ambassador and his suite had to go farther east to Lansle Bourg, toiling up Mont Cenis to the hospice founded on that storm-swept road by the pious King Louis, first of his name, and then dropping down to Piedmont and the ancient town of Susa, where after the hardships of the day’s journey they regaled themselves with ‘tartes et flaunes.’ Whether it was the climbing or the flauns I do not know, but next day Sir Hugh’s palfreman was ill, and another servant had to be put in his place at Avigliano. On Friday, April 25, Turin was reached, and a stay was made here until the following Tuesday, a rest that must have been welcome after three weeks’ continuous travelling. Portmanteaux and bags were repaired, clothes washed, and bodies reinvigorated by a more varied choice of food than was possible while travelling; shoulders of mutton, pigeons, chickens, figs, grapes, and other fruit were bought, and the cook prepared ‘charlet,’ evidently an ancestress of the aristocratic Charlotte Russe rather than of her plebeian namesake Apple Charlotte, as the constituents were milk and eggs. The journey was resumed on Wednesday, April 30, the route lying eastwards through Chivasso and Moncalvo to an unidentifiable place, ‘Basseignanh,’ evidently just across the Po in Lombardy, as here the coinage becomes ‘emperials,’ of which it required twenty to make a ‘gros tournois.’ Lomello, Pavia, Piacenza, Borgo San Donnino (where for the first time we note a purchase of cheese, for which the district is still famous), Parma, Reggio, and Modena follow in uneventful succession, but instead of continuing along the same line to Bologna, as does the modern traveller, the embassy now turned sharply to the south-west to Sassuolo. In this more countrified district the rate of exchange fell, and the ‘gros tournois’ was only worth eighteen instead of twenty ‘emperials,’ but as a compensation the accountant notes under Frassinoro, the next station on the road through the picturesque valley of the Secchia, that the expenses of four days were small, thanks to the presents of ‘la Marcoys.’ I am not clear as to the identity of this Marquess; all this part of Italy was a mass of little lordships and semi-independent principalities, but for the most part their lords were Dukes. The Marquess of Carrara seems a reasonable suggestion—if I am right in thinking that there was such a person, and am not confusing him with the Marquess of Carabas, who, from his occurrence in the history of Puss in Boots, was presumably a noble of Catalonia. Lucca was reached on the eve of Ascension Day, and the feast itself was spent at Pistoia, where the coinage in use was ‘Pisans,’ the ‘gros tournois’ being worth 4s. 2d. of Pisan money. The same currency continued in use in Florence and Siena, after which ‘curteneys’ are introduced, the ‘gros tournois’ being worth 5s. of this money, which, however, was only in use for two days, during which halts were made at Acquapendente and Santa Cristina, a town on the shore of the Lake of Bolsena, which name commemorates that saint’s escape from martyrdom by drowning, thanks to the miraculous buoyancy of her millstone, on which she floated to shore as St. Piran floated on his stone to the delectable duchy of Cornwall. After this the accounts are kept at Viterbo in ‘paperins,’ 3s. 4d. of papal money being equivalent to the ‘gros tournois,’ changing next day, for the last time on the way out, to ‘provis,’ at 2s. 10d. Passing Sutri and Isola, Rome was reached on Whit Monday. Here they found Master Thomas of Southwark, who had been sent on ahead to hire lodgings and furniture, and here they spent six weeks.

‘St. Piran.’

Pope Boniface having agreed to act as arbiter between the Kings of France and England, Sir Hugh de Vere’s mission was accomplished and the embassy left Rome on the afternoon of Thursday, July 9, the Count of Savoy accompanying them as far as Isola, their first halting-place. The route followed as far as Pistoia was the same as that taken on the way out, but by rather shorter stages, as several of the party appear to have been knocked up by the heat. At San Quirico, between Acquapendente and Siena, hackneys were hired for the invalids and special dishes were prepared for them—eggs, honey, and apples being bought ‘to make appilmus,’ as well as ‘verjus, peresill et autre sause.’ Ten miles out of Pistoia, at Buggiano, a halt had to be made and rooms hired for the sick members of the party, who were left here while the others went on to Lucca. Here a fortnight’s stay was made, and when the journey was resumed, on August 5, progress was very slow. Possibly in order to get the benefit of the sea air a different route was followed from this point. The halt at Lucca had not restored the strength of the invalids, and the party crept on at about five miles a day, stopping at insignificant villages, such as ‘Pont Sent Pere’ and ‘Valprumaye’ between Lucca and Camajore, ‘Fregedo’ on the coast between Pietrasanta and Sarzana, ‘Pamarne’ and ‘La Matillane’ between Sarzana, where a three days’ halt was made, and Borghetto. It would seem that there was a particularly bad piece of road after Sestri, as Sir Hugh and the other sick persons were taken by boat from Sestri to Chiavari, where a whole week was spent. During this halt Wilkoc the clerk was sent into Genoa to fetch a doctor for Sir Hugh, and at the same time, money having run short, fresh supplies were obtained from some Pistoian merchants resident in the town. Fortunately Genoa was well furnished with both cash and curatives, for not only was it one of the richest ports in Europe, but it shared with its rival, Venice, the fame of producing a ‘treacle’ which possessed as many healing virtues as any of the quack compounds that now make England hideous to the railway traveller.

After halts at Rapallo, Recco, and Nervi, Genoa was reached on September 4. Here they rested for two weeks, and as the treacle had apparently proved ineffectual, even when supplemented with ‘surupes, leitwaires, especeries, emplastres et totes manieres de medicines,’ seven members of the party who were still ill were sent by sea to Savona. Their comrades who came by land having joined them, they left the coast and turned north through Cortemiglia, ‘Castillol,’ which I suppose is Castagnole, Villanova, and Rivoli, ten miles west of Turin, to Susa. Here two days were spent and ‘Monsieur Johan Carbonel and Jak le Gigneur’ dined with them, but who these guests were I do not know. From Susa to Chambéry the route followed was that by which the embassy had travelled on their way out, but from Chambéry they took a more easterly road through Belley, St. Rambert, and Bourg, rejoining the former route at Tournus. From ‘Petit Paris,’ somewhere between Nogent-sur-Seine and Tournan, four men were sent on ahead to secure accommodation. Only one night was spent in Paris, and our travellers pressed on northwards through Hodancourt, Etrépagny, Oisemont, and Neufchâtel by Boulogne to Wissant, which they reached on the last day of October, and whence they crossed to England a week later, regaling themselves in the meanwhile with whelks and mustard—not necessarily eaten together.

‘... crossed to England.’

Sir Hugh and his company had thus been out of England eight months, the journey to Rome occupying some seven weeks, but the return trip covering four months. If we have no hint of any adventures and few details of anything but food, it only shows that the roads were safe and the travellers good Englishmen.

III

At the present time[1] the coronation is the Rome towards which all roads lead; and if a walk down Oxford Street lands us among ‘coronation’ cuffs and collars and soaps and souvenirs it is only to be expected that a Mediæval Byway should bring us into the subject of coronations. For of all the survivals with which we are surrounded in this conservative country the coronation ceremonies, though shorn of much of their grandeur and significance during the last hundred years, are still the most unchanged in spirit and in detail. For one thing, they restore to London for a brief period the predominant feature of mediæval life—colour. For a few days, in 1911 as in 1236, the city is ‘adorned with silkes, banners, crownes, pals, tapers, lampes, and with certaine wonders of wit and strange showes’; and, though the colour-scheme is baulked of fulness by the sad clothes of the spectators, there is a blaze of gaiety which is pleasing in its appeal to primitive instincts and its disregard of business and utilitarianism.

‘Henry’s badge.’

The proceedings in connection with the coronation of our mediæval kings began at the Tower. Very significant was it that before taking formal possession of his throne the king took practical possession of the fortress. But if his claim to the crown rested partly on force and the strong hand, it rested also upon the elective will of the people, and accordingly, on the day before the coronation the king rode from the Tower to Westminster Palace to show himself to his subjects that they might see what sort of man it was whom they were choosing for king. Naturally the processional ride was made as magnificent and impressive as possible. With the king went a crowd of nobles, all on horseback, conspicuous amongst them being the recipients of ‘coronation honours,’ the new-made Knights of the Bath, usually thirty or forty in number, upon whom the honour of knighthood had been bestowed, with the accompaniment of scarlet-furred robes and other gifts of apparel, the previous day. Richard III., whose cavalcade eclipsed the splendour of his predecessors, was accompanied by three dukes, nine earls, and a hundred knights and lords, all gorgeously attired, ‘whereof the Duke of Buckingham so farre exceeded, that the caparison of his horse was so charged with embroydered worke of gold, as it was borne up from the ground by certaine his footmen thereto appointed.’ Nor did Henry VII., though careful and even parsimonious in most matters, spare expense over his procession. He himself was arrayed in rich cloth of gold of a purple ground, of which ten yards were bought from Jerome Friscobaldi at the prodigious price of £8 the yard; the ‘trappour,’ or caparison, of his charger was made of crimson damask cloth of gold, costing £80, and either this or another trappour was adorned with 102 silver-gilt ‘portculiez’ (Henry’s badge, so often repeated upon the walls of his chapel at the Abbey) made by ‘Hanche Doucheman.’ Over the king’s head was a canopy of cloth of gold, the gilded staves of which were carried by relays of knights, changed at frequent intervals that many might partake of the honourable but arduous duty, and in attendance on him were the ‘henxmen,’ dressed in crimson satin (costing 16s. the yard) and white cloth of gold embroidered with the royal arms from designs by Christian Poynter, who also executed twelve ‘cotes of armes for herauldes, beten and wrought in oyle colours with fyne gold,’ and twelve similar trumpet banners. The henchmen led the spare charger which for some reason always formed part of the royal procession. It was, possibly, for this state charger that the ‘trappours of St. George’ were made, of white cloth of gold, but the ‘trappour of blue velvet with 102 red roses worked with Venice gold and dragons of red velvet,’ and the other ‘trappour’ with the arms of Cadwallader, clearly belonged to the queen’s portion of the procession. She was clad in white damask cloth of gold, reclining on cushions of the same material in a litter drawn by two horses with white harness and trappings, under a canopy of white damask with silver staves. Five henchmen in crimson and blue led her palfrey of estate; then came three ‘cheires,’ or carriages, each containing four ladies and draped in crimson, and then seven ladies in blue velvet ‘purfelled’ with crimson satin, riding on palfreys all of one colour with harness of crimson cloth of gold, her suite displaying a splendour of colour which formed an excellent foil to her own silvery radiance.

A ‘herauld.’

Our sovereigns no longer start from a fortress to ascend the throne, and they show themselves to their loyal subjects after they have been crowned instead of before the ceremony, not from any fear that they may prove unacceptable to the people, but because none would dream of challenging their right. But if Buckingham Palace is a less satisfactory starting-point than the Tower (and there are artists who consider the latter the more picturesque), there are some things in which we have improved upon our ancestors. Chief amongst these are the police arrangements. It is no longer necessary to proclaim, as was done when Edward II. was crowned, ‘That no one shall dare to carry sword, or pointed knife, or dagger, mace, or club, or other arms on pain of imprisonment for a year and a day’—the only weapon of offence thus sternly prohibited now-a-days being the aeroplane. Nor is the threat of a similar penalty needed to ensure the polite treatment of foreigners attending the coronation. A certain amount of severity was no doubt required to counteract the effects of nine conduits in the Cheap running red and white wine, with auxiliary fountains at Westminster, however weak the wine may have been. Modern coronations are not ‘hanseld and auspicated,’ as was that of Richard I., with the blood of many Jews, because some of their number had dared sacrilegiously to gaze upon the king—a privilege notoriously accorded to cats, but evidently forbidden to a dog of a Jew. On the other hand, we are spared such disastrous overcrowding as occurred at the coronation of Edward II., when the king had to go out of his palace by the back door to avoid the crush, and by the pressure of the crowd within the Abbey a stout earthen wall was broken down, a prominent citizen ‘threstyd to deth,’ and the area reserved for the ceremony invaded.

It would seem from the instance just quoted that the temporary erections made by our ancestors on these occasions would not have passed the L.C.C. tests, and we may also flatter ourselves that they would never have been capable of hiding their churches and other public buildings under a sea of ingeniously constructed deal seats, but still the carpenters and upholsterers were kept pretty busy at the Abbey for some little time before the ceremony, though the tradesmen who most benefited were the leading mercers, who had to supply great quantities of cloth of gold, velvet, Turkish and Italian silks, samite, and fine linen of Tripoli. Within the Abbey, at the crossing of the transepts, a high stage had to be erected for the chair of state, where the king sat in full view of the people during the first part of the service. This stage was covered with rugs and hung round with silken cloth of gold, the chair of state being also provided with a golden canopy and silken cushions. Several varieties of cloth of gold were used, the bill for this material at the coronation of Edward III., in 1327, amounting to £450, much of it being bought from one John de Perers, who might very well have been the father of Alice Perers, that ‘busy court-flie’ who infatuated the king in his declining years. The most expensive variety was ‘silken cloth of gold of Nak,’ but what place is meant by Nak I cannot say with any certainty: just conceivably it might be Nasik close to Bombay, for much of this material came from at least as far east as Turkey; but whatever its place of origin, it was used for the king’s hose and shoes, and for the little tent or shrine before the high altar within which the ceremony of anointing, with its attendant disrobing, took place. The next most valuable kind is described as raffata—presumably ‘reeded,’ though the word is not to be found in Ducange (when will some one do for mediæval Latin what Oxford and Sir James Murray are doing for modern English?)—was used for covering the archbishop’s chair, while of a third variety, diapered or damask, one whole cloth was offered at the high altar, and two cloths sewed together were used to cover the tomb of the king’s grandfather, Edward I. Others of these diaper cloths, with purple velvet and cloth of Tartar, or Armenian, silk, were used in the chancel and round the high altar, while canvas cloth of gold was mixed with the more precious kinds or employed in less important positions.

The young Edward III.’

The king, after his ride to Westminster Palace, partook of a light supper and retired to his chamber. If he had not already been knighted he prepared for that ceremony, a usual though not invariable preliminary to coronation, by keeping vigil. The room in which the young Edward III. rested was provided with red rugs with the royal arms worked in the corners, three ‘bankers’ or bench covers of a like design, and other ‘bankers’ of red, green, murrey and blue, and his bath was covered with silken cloth of gold, though for the bath of Henry VII. Flemish linen was considered good enough. On the morning of the coronation day the king, after the ceremonial bath, put on spotless raiment, to signify that ‘as his body glistens with the washing and the beauty of his vestments so may his soul shine,’ and went into Westminster Hall, where he was lifted by his lords into his throne. Presently the royal procession, the king walking barefoot and the various nobles carrying the regalia, started down the covered way, carpeted with the coarse burrell cloth of Candlewykstrete (now Cannon Street), so much of this carpet as lay outside the church being the perquisite of the lord of the manor of Bedford as almoner for the day, and were met by the monks and clergy, and by them conducted into the Abbey. With the details of the ceremony that then ensued, ‘whereof the circumstaunce to shewe in ordre wolde aske a longe leysoure,’ all who are interested must by this time be well acquainted, so often and so fully has it been described.

Crowns ancient and modern.

The ceremonial investiture was performed with the regalia of St. Edward, preserved in the Abbey treasury and regarded as too sacred for lay hands to touch, so that in the procession they were carried set out upon a covered board; but before the close of the service the king laid aside the crown of St. Edward and assumed his royal crown. This did not resemble the glittering monstrosity with which we now render our sovereigns’ heads uncomfortable and slightly absurd, but was a dignified and artistic circlet of the type known to heraldic writers as a ducal coronet. Edward III. had three crowns, all of gold, the chief—described in 1356 as ‘lately pawned in Flanders’—with eight fleurs-de-lys of rubies and emeralds with four great orient pearls and eight sprays of balas rubies and orient sapphires; the second, given to Queen Philippa, had ten fleurs-de-lys of rubies and emeralds with groups of emeralds and six pearls; the third was not, strictly speaking, a crown, but a chaplet, being an unflowered circlet with nine groups of great oriental pearls and in the midst a beautiful ruby. Wearing his crown and attended by his nobles bearing the other insignia of royalty, the newly anointed king returned to Westminster Palace for the great business of the coronation banquet. For this event Westminster Hall was prepared, a ‘siege royal,’ or throne, being set for the king at the upper end, covered with ‘Turkish cloth of gold,’ or other handsome material, with a canopy. The benches of the lower tables were covered with ‘bankers’ of red or blue cloth and ‘dorsers’ of the same material hung behind the guests—the ‘dorser’ being the mediæval equivalent of the ‘thing they call a dodo, running round the wall.’ The ‘dorsers’ behind the royal seat were of cloth of gold and were protected from the dampness of the walls by a lining of canvas. When the guests were seated in their order of precedence, and the Earl Marshal and his attendants had ridden up and down the hall to make room for the attendants, the banquet began, and during its course a number of nobles and lords of manors had the duty or privilege of discharging various services to the king, receiving as a rule valuable perquisites. Thus the table had been laid by the lord of Kibworth-Beauchamp manor, in return for which service he kept the salt cellar, knives, and spoons; the cloths and napkins had been provided by the lord of Ashley in Essex, as Chief Napier, and remained his property. The important post of Chief Butler was filled by the Earl of Arundel, though at the coronation of Queen Eleanor, in 1236, his place was taken by the Earl of Surrey, as he had been excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a quarrel over sporting rights, but the lord of Wimondley had the privilege of passing the first cup of wine to the king, and then withdrew in favour of the mayor of London, who acted as chief cupbearer—not without reward, for at the coronation feast of Edward III. the mayor received as his fee a gold cup enamelled with the royal arms, and a gold ‘water-spout-pot,’ or ewer, ornamented with enamel and two Scottish pearls. At the same feast the Earl of Lancaster as steward secured four silver chargers stamped with the arms of Harclay, and four others bearing the badge of the Countess of Hereford, ten silver skewers, and eight sauce-boats, each marked with the royal leopard, and the chamberlain carried off two basins parcel gilt and enamelled with the arms of England and Scotland. The lord of Addington supplied a dish of gruel and the lord of Liston in Essex wafers; other persons brought water and held basins and towels, and the head of the family of Dymoke of Scrivelsby rode into the hall in full armour, with his punning crest of a moke’s ears on his helm, and offered to fight any one who would deny the king’s sovereignty.

‘Dymoke of Scrivelsby.’

But after all the main thing at a feast is the food. And that was plentiful—even at the banquet of Edward II., where the waiting was disgraceful. For his coronation feast Edward I. sent out orders to the sheriffs of the different counties to provide 27,800 chickens, 540 oxen, about a thousand pigs and 250 sheep, besides instructing the prelates to send up as many swans, peacocks, cranes, rabbits, and kids as possible, and also giving large orders for salmon, pike, eels, and lampreys. It is not surprising that his cook, Hugh of Malvern, required six oaks and six beeches to be made into tables for the kitchen. This suggests a certain grossness of feeding which a study of the actual menu might dissipate; certainly the banquets of later sovereigns were sufficiently elaborate and varied. When Henry VI. was crowned in 1429, at the early age of nine, he was served with three ‘courses.’ The first of these included not only boiled beef and mutton, capons, herons, and cygnets, but ‘Frument with venyson; viand royall plantyd losynges of golde; Bore hedes in castellys of golde and enarmed; a rede leche with lyons coruyn therin’—in other words, a pink jelly or mould ornamented with lions—and, as a crowning glory, ‘Custarde royall with a lyoparde of golde syttynge therein and holdynge a floure de lyce.’ The second course, besides chickens, partridges, cranes, peacock ‘enhakyll’ (with its feathers), and rabbits, contained ‘pygge endoryd’—gilded sucking-pig—‘a frytour garnysshed with a leopardes hede and two estryche feders; Gely party wryten and notyd with Te Deum Laudamus,’ and, as a masterpiece, ‘A whyte leche (or blancmange) plantyd with a rede antelop, a crowne aboute his necke with a chayne of golde; flampayne powderyd with leopardes and flower delyce of golde.’ After this the third course, with no creation more wonderful than ‘A bake mete lyke a shylde, quarteryd red and whyte, sette with losenges gylte and floures of borage,’ falls rather flat. With each course was presented a ‘sotyltie,’ or elaborate device made, presumably, of sugar and pastry, representing groups of kings and saints. These ‘subtleties,’ however, were not to be compared to those at the coronation banquet of Katherine of France, queen of Henry V. Her banquet also was of three courses, ‘and ye shall understand that this feest was all of fysshe,’ and a most astonishing variety of fish there was. Besides all the common fish—salmon, soles, turbot, etc.—there were lampreys, in comparison with which Henry III. once declared that all other fish were insipid, ‘sturgeon with welkes,’ a combination of the royal and the plebeian, fried ‘menues,’ or minnows, the mediæval whitebait, conger, now much neglected, and ‘porpies rostyd,’ besides a score of other kinds, including certain mysterious ‘dedellys in burneux.’ The sweets included ‘Gely coloured with columbyne floures’; ‘flampeyn—a kind of raised pie—flourished with a scochon royall, therein three crownes of golde plantyd with floure delyce and floures of camemyll wrought of confeccyons’; ‘A whyte leche flourysshed with hawthorne levys and redde hawys;’ and ‘A march payne garnysshed with dyverse fygures of aungellys, amonge the whiche was set an ymage of Seynt Katheryne holdynge this rason, Il est escrit, pur voir et dit, per mariage pur cest guerre ne dure.’ Of the ‘sotylties’ the first showed a pelican and its young, and an image of St. Katherine (of Alexandria) holding a book in one hand and an inscribed scroll in the other; the second showed a panther, the Queen’s badge, and St. Katherine with her more usual emblem, the wheel. The third and most elaborate was ‘a tigre lokyng in a mirrour and a man sittyng on horse backe, clene armyd, holdyng in his armys a tiger whelpe, with this reason (i.e. motto), Par force sanz reson ie ay pryse ceste beste, and with his one hande makynge a countenaunce of throwynge of mirrours at the great tigre, the whiche helde this reason, Gile de mirrour ma fete distour.’ The legend of the Tiger and the Mirror has been very fully worked out in connection with the arms of the Kentish family of Sybill by Mr. G. C. Druce, a great authority on unnatural history, but he does not appear to have known this instance of its occurrence. An early bestiary informs us that ‘there is a beast which is called Tiger; it is a kind of serpent’ (this suggests the zoological classification of Punch’s railway porter—‘Cats is dogs and rabbits is dogs, but a tortoise is a hinsect’). ‘This beast is of a nature so courageous and fierce that no living man dares to approach it. When the beast has young the hunters ... watch until they see the tiger go off and leave its den and its young; they then seize the cubs and place mirrors in the path just where they leave. The character of the tiger is such that however angry it may be it is unable to look in the mirror without its gaze becoming fixed.’ (Surely this is more suggestive of Eve than of the serpent?) ‘It believes then that it is its cub that it sees in the mirror; it recognises its figure with great satisfaction and believes positively to have found its cub.’ (This property of the mirror may explain the puzzling question why so many ladies persist in dressing like their own daughters.) Thus the hunters escape while the tiger stops where it is, and I think that I had better follow the tiger’s example.

‘The tiger and the mirror.’

IV

To read a medical dictionary is to marvel that any man should enjoy even brief intervals of health, there are so many delicate organs in the body and so many diseases lying in wait for them. Read the pronouncements of specialists on diet and the dangers which attend the eating of any food or the drinking of any liquid, and the marvel grows. Add the extraordinary facility with which accidents occur, and the margin between life and death becomes surprisingly narrow. The crew of a destroyer are habitually separated from the other world by about a quarter of an inch of steel. With most of us the partition is less obvious, less constant and uniform, but very nearly as thin in places. For any but the most hardened there must always be a feeling of pleased surprise upon emerging safely on the other side of Piccadilly Circus or the Embankment by Blackfriars. (It is true that in the latter case a paternal, not to say grandmotherly, Council has provided the unexciting alternative of a subway, but only leisurely athletes have the time or energy to descend and reascend those stairs.) The average City man is within inches and seconds of death every day, and it is only when the inches and seconds become fractional that he realises for the moment his insecurity of tenure. Which is just as well. Every age has its own dangers: we have the motor car, unwitting apostle of socialism in its brutal, individualistic disregard for the rights of others; mediæval man, I am inclined to think, ran most risk from the quick temper of his fellows.

From time to time, when some undesirable alien is arrested for stabbing an enemy or chance acquaintance who has annoyed him, the police-court magistrate before whom he is brought will comment, with patriotic pride, on the ‘un-English’ nature of the offence. And it is true that at the present time the Englishman as a rule emphasises his disagreement with his opponent by means of fist or hob-nailed boot rather than with a knife, but this was certainly not so in mediæval times. Call a man ‘a boor’ nowadays and you may get a black eye, but the results were more disastrous in the thirteenth century, as John Marsh found when he applied that opprobrious term to Richard Fraunkfee as they were walking back from church at Doncaster, for Richard promptly knifed him. Every man in those days carried a knife, dagger, anelace, or baselard, and produced it without hesitation if angered. Needless to say, the knife was much in evidence after harvest feasts, wakes, and especially visits to the tavern, for drunkenness has been an English vice since Fitz Stephen, in the twelfth century, spoke of ‘the inordinate drinking of fools’ as one of the two plagues of London. How far this failing was common to both sexes I do not know; casual references to women in taverns occur occasionally, but they might have been there as blamelessly as their descendants in a modern tea-shop, and, so far as I can remember, I have only come across one woman who met her death when drunk—a Yorkshire woman who fell down a well. At the same time, seeing that ‘the good wyf taugte hir dougter’ in the fifteenth century that ‘if thou be ofte drunke it falle thee to schame,’ it looks as if occasional excess might have been condoned. With the exception of drunkenness, the moving cause of the innumerable murderous assaults is rarely given, and it is rather curious that the only two cases which I have found of men quarrelling, with fatal results, over a woman both occurred at ironworks in Yorkshire in 1266.

‘... got his arms round a branch.’

Knives were not infrequently responsible for deaths without any evil intent on the part of their owners. In quite a large number of cases when boys were playing together a knife would fall out of its sheath and inflict a mortal wound. And then, if the owner were over twelve, he would have, theoretically, to go to prison and stay there till he received a formal pardon from the king for accidental manslaughter. I say ‘theoretically’ because in practice the culprit usually ‘fled,’ which, I suspect, meant that he went round the corner while the village constable carefully looked in the wrong place for him. An unusual incident connected with a knife occurred in Dorset in 1280, when a girl, clearing the table after dinner, picked up the tablecloth with a knife inside, and as she went out of the room tripped and fell so that the knife stuck into her. It was about the same date that a Suffolk peasant, William le Keu, flung a knife against the wall of his house and it bounded off and killed his infant daughter, lying on her mother’s lap in front of the fire. Why he should have thrown his knife at the wall does not appear, but people were always throwing things about and hitting inoffensive passers-by. For instance, a man would fling a rake or a flail at some chicken and hit his own child. Children, in fact, had an unhappy knack of coming round the corner with disastrous results to themselves, especially when their elders were playing quoits or pennystone down the village street. One of the most curious cases of what we may call an indirect accident was when two small boys went into an orchard to get apples; one of them threw a stone up into a tree, but instead of bringing down an apple it hit a stone that some one had thrown up long before, and this fell on his cousin’s head and killed him. Another case of the unforeseen happened in Nottinghamshire in the thirteenth century, when Richard Palmer was climbing a tree in a churchyard to take a crow’s nest. He was standing on a bough when suddenly it broke; but the result was not what might have been expected, for Richard got his arms round a branch and after hanging for a long time came down safely, but the broken bough fell on the head of a man standing down below, and ‘the dog it was that died.’

‘The broken bough fell on the head of a man standing down below.’

Fire, the second of Fitz Stephen’s ‘plagues,’ played its part in preventing over-population, as might be expected when the framework of the huts was of wood, the roof of thatch and the floor covered with straw or rushes. If a woman went to bed leaving a lighted candle stuck on the wall it was hardly surprising if she paid for her carelessness with her life, but as a rule the victims were children or very old people, and as often as not the immediate cause was some chicken, or pig, or calf getting on to the open hearth and scattering the fire on to the straw-covered floor. For the mediæval peasant shared his hut with his live stock, though it would not be often that a man would be called upon to separate two horses fighting in his kitchen; this did actually happen to a man in Winchester, and as usual the peacemaker got the worst of it. Fire, again, acting indirectly through the medium of water, was another frequent cause of disaster, a most astonishing number of cases occurring of persons, usually children, scalded to death. I can only suppose that the cauldrons were large and insecurely balanced; that they were large may be concluded from the frequency with which people fell into them. But cold water was perhaps as deadly an agent as any. In Yorkshire in particular the coroners’ rolls suggest that the number of people that fell off bridges and out of boats into streams and down wells must have seriously interfered with the purity of the water supply; but, fortunately, water was very rarely drunk in those days. The most frequent cause of drowning seems to have been falling off a horse, and the mediæval version of the well-known proverb ought to have been ‘One man can ride a horse to the water, but nine out of ten can’t stay on when he drinks.’ Taking the number of cases in which men watering their horses did get drowned, and allowing that a reasonable percentage of those thrown into the water scrambled out again, the standard of mediæval riding must have been about equal to that of the White Knight, who, when his horse stopped fell over its head, and when it went on again fell over its tail.

Occasionally the propelling agent, so to speak, was human, as in the case of a clothworker of Tadcaster, who, ‘being annoyed with his wife,’ flung her into the Wharfe and drowned her. The measure seems extreme, and he could not plead peril of shipwreck, the excuse of the Syracusan, who, ‘when all ponderous things were to be exonerated out of the ship,’ flung his wife into the sea ‘because she was the greatest burden.’

In spite of a verdict of ‘misadventure,’ I cannot help feeling a little sceptical about an incident which took place at Bedford in 1220, when William the miller was driving certain Jews in his cart, and at the bridge the cart fell into the water and three Jews were drowned. As I read the story there came into my mind Sam Weller’s conversation with Mr. Pickwick about his father’s remarkable accident with the voters: ‘“Here and there it is a wery bad road,” says my father. “’Specially near the canal, I think,” says the gentleman.... You wouldn’t believe it, sir, but on the wery day as he came down with them woters his coach was upset on that ’ere wery spot and every man on ’em was turned into the canal.’

Occasionally, also, the victim was a voluntary one, as in the case of John Milner, who, with the contempt for consequences which we might expect from one of his name, jumped into the Ouse. The consequence for him was that he became what Mr. Mantalini called ‘a demmed, moist, unpleasant corpse,’ and the jury decided that he had acted ‘by temptation of the Devil.’ While they displayed a certain boldness in thus arraigning the Devil for procuring, aiding, and abetting a felony, they showed more discretion in another quarter, for when a man and his wife were found struck by lightning, where a modern jury would have declared it an ‘act of God’ the mediæval jury preferred the less dogmatic and more reasonable verdict that ‘no one is suspected.’ It is pleasant to note that in another instance, where the body of a man struck by lightning was first found by his wife, the jury expressly exonerated her, saying ‘she is not suspected’ (of having done it).

I am not quite certain of the force of a verdict of ‘by temptation of the Devil’ in a case of suicide, but it seems to have been the half-way house between felo-de-se and madness, to have been, in fact, the mediæval equivalent of that ‘temporary insanity’ which is the invariable verdict in modern times. The idea that a man must be mad to take his own life, and that therefore all suicides were insane, had not occurred to the mediæval mind, but they evidently felt that there were cases in which the suicide was not himself, although he was not sufficiently outside or beside himself to be considered an absolute lunatic. There are strange and grim little stories of madmen in some of these old records. One of these, not wanting in pathos in its evidence of good intentions diabolically twisted, tells how Robert de Bramwyk, a lunatic who had some lucid intervals (and was, therefore, probably not so closely guarded), in a fit of frenzy took his sister Denise, who had been deformed and hunchbacked from her birth, and, wishing to make her straight, cast her into a cauldron of hot water, and taking her out of this bath trampled upon her with his feet to straighten her limbs.

‘... cast her into a cauldron.’

With the exception of this madman’s empiric bone-setting I only remember to have come across one instance of an operation being mentioned in this particular class of coroner’s records. This was in 1330, when Richard de Berneston, a surgeon of Nottingham, cut a ‘wenne’ on the arm of William de Brunnesley and William afterwards died of heart failure. It is rather remarkable that doctors seem hardly ever to have been held responsible for the death of their patients, though in 1350 we do find Thomas Rasyn, leech, and Pernel, his wife, pardoned for the death of John Panyers, miller, of Sidmouth, whom they were said to have killed through ignorance of their art; the inclusion of the wife seems to point to a mediæval nursing home. As a rule, probably, when a patient died under a doctor’s care, his relations took the matter philosophically and assumed that the treatment had been correct and that he would have died in any case. It was the patients who survived that made all the fuss. For instance, there was Thomas Medewe, the vicar of a Hertfordshire parish in the fifteenth century, who ‘by goddys visitacion had an infirmyte in his throte.’ The local practitioner, or his equivalent, who would probably have been a ‘wise woman,’ being unable to deal with it, the vicar came up to London and consulted John Dayvyle, surgeon, who gave him a plaster for his throat which did him much good and only cost 4d. Unfortunately for both parties, the surgeon finding that his patient was ‘nygh hole’ as a result of his first experiment insisted upon his having another plaster, for which he charged 20d. to make him ‘thurgh hole.’ The result was disastrous, as the patient ‘felle in suche infirmitye that he might not speke and was like therby to have dyed’ if he had not called in another doctor. It was, in the circumstances, perhaps natural that the vicar expressed his feelings strongly when Dayvyle sent in a bill for 20s. for attendance. There was the case also of Edmund Broke, of Southampton, who came up to London to undergo an operation, and put himself in the hands of Nicholas Sax, who stipulated for a fee of 33s. 4d., of which 13s. 4d. was paid in advance. The patient, according to his own account, was in jeopardy of his life through the ‘defaute and unkunnyng’ of Dr. Sax, and had to call in John Surgeon, ‘dwelling at Powlez cheyn,’ who cured him and to whom he paid the 20s. which his incompetent attendant claimed was due to him.

Of course there was another side to the question, patients then as now being more ready with promises when ill than with fees when well. There was William Robinson, for instance, a haberdasher of Lombard Street, who fell ill with pestilence and sent for William Paronus, promising that if he would only save him ‘he would reward him as well as ever he was rewarded for any cure’; but when, after a month’s attendance, he was well again, he declined even to pay the doctor’s out-of-pocket expenses incurred for drugs. And sometimes there were cases in which it was difficult to decide who was in the right. One such case came into court in 1292. Mauger le Vavassour, a member of a leading Yorkshire family, fell ill; his wife, Agnes, and other friends, including his uncle, Henry le Chapeleyn, sent for Master Otto of Germany, evidently a doctor of repute, promising him one mark to come and see the invalid, and further six marks if he would undertake his treatment. So Master Otto paid his visit and then went off to York to the apothecary’s and compounded various medicines and healing drinks, which he gave to Mauger, with excellent effect. When the patient was convalescent Master Otto put him on a very strict diet, so strict that Mauger grew restive, and his wife, who sympathised with his feelings, gave him various forbidden foods. The doctor, finding his orders disobeyed, declined to accept responsibility, washed his hands of the case and withdrew. The question then arose whether he was entitled to his fees or whether he had shown neglect by leaving his patient before he was fully cured. The jury decided that Master Otto ordered the strict diet for Mauger’s good, and not, as had been suggested, with the object of keeping him weak, and so increasing the bill for attendance, but they also found that as a matter of fact the extra food did the patient good and not harm. The verdict being thus for both parties the judges were puzzled and reserved their decision.

Another rather curious point cropped up about the middle of the fifteenth century. Eryk de Vedica, one of the brethren of the Grey Friars of London, was a physician of skill and reputation, and was sent for by Alice, wife of William Stede, a vintner. She seems to have been in a very bad way, and when Brother Eryk saw her and understood her ‘grete age and jubertous sikeness’ he was with difficulty persuaded to attempt her cure. However, after five weeks’ attention he ‘had soo doon hys parte vnto her that she thought herself wele amended in her body, she cowde hym grete thancke and gave hym 20s. for his labour.’ And then her curmudgeon of a husband, who was possibly not particularly pleased at her recovery, sued Brother Eryk for taking the money, and technically the unfortunate friar had no defence, as ‘the common law supposeth every receiving of the husband’s goods or money by the hands of his wife without his licence or command to be a wrongful taking away of the same from him.’ We will hope that the Court of Chancery, whose assistance was invoked, over-ruled the Common Law and did the friar justice.

It was not unusual for friars to have a knowledge of science and medicine, but a statement that I read the other day in a book recently published, that most (I believe my author said ‘all’) mediæval doctors ‘were, of course, monks’ is singularly wide of the truth. On the contrary, in even the largest monasteries it was customary to call in a doctor from outside in any case of serious illness, and the greater houses frequently retained the services of a secular physician. The cathedral monastery of Winchester, for instance, in the fourteenth century, made an agreement with Master Thomas of Shaftesbury that he should attend the convent in return for his board and lodging, the board, it may be noticed, including a daily allowance of one and a half gallons of the best ale and a gallon of a smaller brew. It is probable also that Master Adam of St. Albans, surgeon, who came from the priory of Ely to attend King Edward I. in his last illness at Lanercost, was the cathedral doctor. There were, of course, medical attendants attached to the court; their salaries were not large, the surgeons of the first two Edwards being paid only from one to two pounds a year, but there were perquisites in the shape of furred robes, gifts of money, or silver goblets from grateful patients, and substantial pickings in the shape of ecclesiastical benefices—the favourite way of pensioning a court physician being to give him one or more prebends or rectories. Occasionally the pension took the form of landed estate, as when Edward III. gave land in Kildare to his surgeon, John Leche, a grant which proved rather a white elephant, for early in the next reign Parliament, seeing the evils of absenteeism, ordered that all owners of estates in Ireland should reside on them in person or else pay for an able-bodied man to assist in policing the country, two alternatives equally trying to the old surgeon’s feelings. With such slender and precarious remuneration it was excusable that the royal doctors should sometimes have an eye to the main chance, and Fabyan tells a story against one Master Dominic, physician (very much) in waiting to Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV. Before the birth of her first child (the Princess Elizabeth) Master Dominic had been very positive that it would be a boy, and so, when the time came, he stood outside the queen’s room ‘that he myght be the firste that shulde brynge tydynges to the kynge of the byrth of the prynce to the entent to have greate thanke and rewarde of the kynge; and lastly when he harde the childe crye, he knockyd or called secretly at the chamber dore, and frayned what the quene had. To whom it was answeryd by one of the ladyes, “what so ever the quenes grace hath here wythin, suer it is that a fole standithe there withoute.” And so confused with thys answere, he deperted wythoute seynge of the kynge for that tyme.’

‘... called secretly at the chamber dore.’

The position of the medical man who was not attached to the court or to some nobleman’s suite is rather obscure. In London during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the surgeons of the city were under the control of two or more master surgeons who acted as universal consultants; any surgeon undertaking a case involving risk to life or limb being obliged to call in one of the masters to see that his treatment was correct. In the same way the veterinary surgeons were at liberty to call in the advice of a master farrier, and if through conceit or negligence they did not do so and the horse they were treating died, then they would be responsible to the owner for its value. As to the country practitioner, it is not quite clear who licensed him to take the title of ‘leech’ or whether he merely assumed it. There were, no doubt, a certain number of men of learning in the provinces, and in 1478 Sir John Savage was able to find a ‘connyng fisission’ for Robert Pilkington in Macclesfield. He certainly required such a one, for, as a result of eating a mess of ‘grene potage’ containing poison he was ‘swolne so grete that he was gyrd abowte his bodye in iij places with towells and gyrdylls’ to prevent him bursting. When a man is in such a state it is ‘a thousand to one if he lives the age of a little fish,’ as Nicholas Culpeper would say, but the physician ‘dyd grete cures to hym’ and he recovered. As a rule, however, it is probable that the country leech had little more knowledge of the healing art than many of his patients. It must be remembered that a knowledge of simple herbal remedies was pretty widely diffused, and an acquaintance with more elaborate preparations formed part of the education of the upper classes. Did not the lady of the manor almost to our own days dispense home-made medicines with moral stimulants to her tenants, whose simple minds and dura ilia received therefrom much benefit? Yea, ‘kynges and kynges sones and other noble men hath ben eximious phisicions,’ and there is in the British Museum a book full of recipes for plasters and ointments, composed by Henry VIII. Half a century before that bluff but gouty monarch ‘the gude Erl of Herforth was holden a gud surgen,’ though he seems to have had a tendency towards extravagant multiplication of ingredients in his prescriptions. In humbler ranks of life every monastery had an Infirmarian who, though dependent on outside assistance in serious cases, was expected to treat the ordinary illnesses of his brethren, and at least to see that there was always ginger, cinnamon, and peony (this last most effectual for the incubus or nightmare) in his cupboard. It is noteworthy that in all the hundreds of hospitals founded prior to the Reformation, from St. Leonard’s at York with its two hundred beds downwards, there appears to have been no provision for medical attendance. The wardens were rarely medical men; Master Thomas Goldington, one of the surgeons of Edward III. was made warden of two hospitals, at Derby and Carlisle, but the only result was that he attended to his private practice and neglected the hospitals. Clearly the rudiments of nursing were assumed to be known to the resident chaplain or some of the inmates—more particularly the women. Wise women have doctored the country-side time out of mind, and in the reign of Elizabeth we even find one, Isabel Warick, practising surgery in York and requiring protection from her male rivals. A century earlier Alice Shevington, servant to William Gregory of London, ‘pretendyng hirself to have had connyng in helyng of sore ighen,’ spent much of her time attending to her neighbours’ eyes instead of her master’s house, wherefore he docked her of part of her munificent wages of 16s. a year.