The Ramsey history, published by Gale, describing a bishop’s visit to court late at night, says that he found the king amusing himself with similar games.9 An ecclesiastical canon, enacted under king Edgar, enjoined that a priest should not be a tæflere, or gambler.

It was not usual, in the middle ages, to possess much furniture, for in those times of insecurity, anything moveable, which could not easily be concealed, was never safe from plunderers. Benches, on which several persons could sit together, and a stool or a chair for a guest of more consideration, were the only seats. Our word chair is Anglo-Norman, and the adoption of the name from that language would seem to indicate that the moveable to which it was applied was unknown to the great mass of the Anglo-Saxon population of the island. The Anglo-Saxon name for it was setl, a seat, or stol; the latter preserved in the modern word stool. We find chairs of different forms in the illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, but they are always represented as the seats of persons of high rank and dignity, usually of kings. The two examples given in the accompanying cut (No. 28), are taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603, fol. 54, v^o., already referred to in our preceding chapters. It will be observed that, although very simple in form, they are both furnished with cushions. The chair in our cut No. 29, taken from Alfric’s translation of Genesis (MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv.), on which a king is seated, is of a different and more elegant construction. We sometimes find, in the manuscripts, chairs of fantastic form, which were, perhaps, creations of the artist’s imagination. Such a one is the singular throne on which king David is seated with his harp, in our cut No. 30, which is also taken from the Harleian Manuscript, No. 603 (fol. 68, v^o.). In addition to the seat, the ladies in the chamber had a scamel, or footstool.

There was a table used in the chamber or bower, which differed altogether from that used in the hall. It was named myse, disc (from the Latin discus), and beod; all words which convey the idea of its being round—beodas (in the plural) was the term applied to the scales of a balance. The Latin phrase, of the 127th Psalm, in circuitu mensæ tuæ, which was evidently understood by the Anglo-Saxon translators as referring to a round table, is translated by one, on ymbhwyrfte mysan thine, and by another, in ymbhwyrfte beodes thines. If we refer back to the preceding chapter, we shall see, in the subjects which appear to exhibit a small domestic party (see cuts No. 15, 19,, and 24), that the table is round; and this was evidently the usual form given among the Anglo-Saxons to the table used in the chamber or private room. This form has been preserved as a favourite one in England down to a very recent period, as that of the parlour-table among the class of society most likely to retain Anglo-Saxon tastes and sentiments. In the pictures, the round table is generally represented as supported on three or four legs, though there are instances in which it was represented with one. In the latter case, the board of the table probably turned up on a hinge, as in our old parlour tea-tables; and in the former it was perhaps capable of being taken off the legs; for there is reason for believing that it was only laid out when wanted, and that, when no longer in use, it was put away on one side of the room or in a closet, in the smallest possible compass.

We have no information to explain to us how the bower or chamber was warmed. In the hall, it is probable that the fire gave warmth and light at the same time, although, in the fragment of the Anglo-Saxon poem relating to the fight at Finnesburg, there is an indistinct intimation that the hall was sometimes lighted with horns, or cressets; but, in the chamber, during the long evenings of winter, it was necessary to have an artificial light to enable its occupants to read, or work, or play. The Anglo-Saxon name for this article, so necessary for domestic comfort, was candel or condel (our candle); and, so general was the application of this term, that it was even used figuratively as we now use the word lamp. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon poets spoke of the sun as rodores candel (the candle of the firmament), woruld-candel (the candle of the world), heofon-condel (the candle of heaven), wyn-condel (the candle of glory). The candle was, no doubt, originally a mere mass of fat plastered round a wick (candel-weoc), and stuck upon an upright stick. Hence the instrument on which it was afterwards supported received the name of candel-sticca or candel-stæf, a candlestick; and the original idea was preserved even when the candle supporter had many branches, it being then called a candel-treow, or candle-tree. The original arrangement of the stick was also preserved; for, down to a very recent period, the candle was not inserted in a socket in the candlestick as at present, but it was stuck upon a spike. The Anglo-Saxon writers speak of candel-snytels, or snuffers. Other names less used, for a candle or some article for giving light, were blacern or blæcern, which is explained in glossaries by the Latin lucerna, and thæcela, the latter signifying merely a light. It was usual, also, among our Saxon forefathers, as among ourselves, to speak of the instrument for illumination as merely leoht, a light—“bring me a light.” A candlestick and candle are represented in one of the cuts in our last chapter (cut No. 19). The Anglo-Saxons, no doubt, derived the use of lamps from the Romans; and they were so utterly at a loss for a word to describe this mode of illumination, that they always called it leoht-fæt, a light-vat, or vessel of light. In our cut (No. 31) we have an Anglo-Saxon lamp, placed on a candelabrum or stand, exactly in the Roman manner. It will be remembered that Asser, a writer of somewhat doubtful authenticity, ascribes to king Alfred the invention of lanterns, as a protection to the candle, to prevent it from swealing in consequence of the wind entering through the crevices of the apartments—not a very bright picture of the comforts of an Anglo-Saxon chamber. The candles were made of wax as well as tallow. The candlestick was of different materials. In one instance we find it termed, in Anglo-Saxon, a leoht-isern, literally a light-iron: perhaps this was the term used for the lamp-stand, as figured in our last cut. In the inventories we have mention of ge-bonene candel-sticcan (candlesticks of bone), of silver-gilt candlesticks, and of ornamented candlesticks.

A bed was a usual article of furniture in the bower or chamber; though there were, no doubt, in large mansions, chambers set apart as bedrooms, as well as chambers in which there was no bed, or in which a bed could be made for the occasion. The account given by Gaimar, as quoted above, of the visit of king Osbert to Beorn’s lady, seems to imply that the chamber in which the lady gave the king his meal had a bed in it. The bed itself seems usually to have consisted merely of a sack (sæccing) filled with straw, and laid on a bench or board. Hence words used commonly to signify the bed itself were bænce (a bench), and streow (straw): and even in king Alfred’s translation of Bede, the statement, “he ordered to prepare a bed for him,” is expressed in Anglo-Saxon by, he heht him streowne ge-gearwian, literally, he ordered to prepare straw for him. All, in fact, that had to be done when a bed was wanted, was to take the bed-sack out of the cyst, or chest, fill it with fresh straw, and lay it on the bench. In ordinary houses it is probable that the bench for the bed was placed in a recess at the side of the room, in the manner we still see in Scotland; and hence the bed itself was called, among other names, cota, a cot; cryb, a crib or stall; and clif or clyf, a recess or closet. From the same circumstance a bedroom was called bed-clyfa or bed-cleofa, and bed-cofa, a bed-closet or bed-cove. Our cut (No. 32), taken from Alfric’s version of Genesis (Claudius, B. iv.), represents beds of this description. Benches are evidently placed in recesses at the side of the chamber, with the beds laid upon them, and the recesses are separated from the rest of the apartment by a curtain, bed-warft or hryfte. The modern word bedstead means, literally, no more than “a place for a bed;” and it is probable that what we call bedsteads were then rare, and only possessed by people of rank. Two examples are given in the annexed cut (No. 33), taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603. Under the head were placed a bolstar and a pyle (pillow), which were probably also stuffed with straw. The clothes with which the sleeper was covered, and which appear in the pictures scanty enough, were scyte, a sheet, bed-felt, a coverlet, which was generally of some thicker material, and bed-reaf, bed-clothes. We know from a multitude of authorities, that it was the general custom of the middle ages to go into bed quite naked. The sketchy character of the Anglo-Saxon drawings renders it difficult sometimes to judge of minute details; but, from the accompanying cuts, it appears that an Anglo-Saxon going into bed, having stripped all his or her clothes off, first wrapped round his body a sheet, and then drew over him the coverlet. Sharon Turner has given a list of the articles connected with the bed, mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon wills and inventories. In the will of a man we find bed-clothes (bed-reafes), with a curtain (hyrfte), and sheet (hopp-scytan), and all that thereto belongs; and he gives to his son the bed-reafe, or bed-cloth, and all its appurtenances. An Anglo-Saxon lady gives to one of her children two chests and their contents, her best bed-curtain, linen, and all the clothes belonging to it. To another child she leaves two chests, and “all the bed-clothes that to one bed belong.” On another occasion we read of pulvinar unum de palleo: not a pillow of straw, as Sharon Turner very erroneously translates it, but a pillow of a sort of rich cloth made in the middle ages. A goat-skin bed-covering was sent to an Anglo-Saxon abbot; and bear-skins are sometimes noticed, as if a part of bed furniture.

The bed-room, or chamber, and the sitting-room were usually identical; for we must bear in mind that in the domestic manners of the middle ages the same idea of privacy was not connected with the sleeping-room as at the present day. Gaimar has preserved an anecdote of Anglo-Saxon times curiously illustrative of this point. King Edgar—a second David in this respect—married the widow of Ethelwold, whom he had murdered in order to clear his way to her bed. The king and queen were sleeping in their bed, which is described as surrounded by a rich curtain, made of a stuff which we cannot easily explain, when Dunstan, uninvited, but unhindered, entered the chamber to expostulate with them on their wickedness, and came to the king’s bedside, where he stood over them, and entered into conversation— A Londres ert Edgar li reis; King Edgar was at London; En son lit jut e la raine, He lay in his bed with the queen, Entur els out une curtine Round them was a curtain Delgé, d’un paille escariman. Spread, made of scarlet paille. Este-vus l’arcevesque Dunstan Behold archbishop Dunstan Très par matin vint en la chambre Came into the chamber very early in the morning. Sur un pecul de vermail lambre On a bed-post of red plank S’est apué cel arcevesque. The archbishop leaned. In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert by the instrumentality of the queen of king Offa, as it is told by Roger of Wendover, we see the queen ordering to be prepared for the royal guest, a chamber, which was adorned for the occasion with sumptuous furniture, as his bed-room. “Near the king’s bed she caused a seat to be prepared, magnificently decked, and surrounded with curtains; and underneath it the wicked woman caused a deep pit to be dug.” Into this pit the king was precipitated the moment he trusted himself on the treacherous seat. It is clear from the context that the chamber thus prepared for the king was a building apart, and that it had only a ground-floor.

It was in the chamber that the child, while an infant, was brought up by its mother. We have few contemporary notices of the treatment of children at this early age by the Anglo-Saxons, but probably it differed little from the general practice of a later period. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, an Englishman named Walter de Bibblesworth, who wrote, as a great proportion of English writers at that day did, in French verse—French as it was then spoken and written in England—has left us a very curious metrical vocabulary, compiled in French with interlinear explanations of the words in English, which commences with man’s infancy. “As soon as the child is born,” says the author, “it must be swathed; lay it to sleep in its cradle, and you must have a nurse to rock it to sleep.” Kaunt le emfès sera nées,
Lors deyt estre maylolez,
En soun berz l’enfaunt chochet,
De une bercere vus purvoyet,
Où par sa norice seyt bercé.
This was the manner in which the new-born infant was treated in all grades of society. If we turn to one of the more serious romances, we find it practised among princes and feudal chiefs equally as among the poor. Thus, when the princess Parise, wandering in the wild woods, is delivered in the open air, she first wraps her child in a piece of sendal, torn apparently from her rich robe, and then binds, or swathels, it with a white cloth:— La dame le conroie à un pan de cendex,
Puis a pris un blanc drap, si a ses fians bendez.
—Parise la Duchesse, p. 76.
When the robbers carry away the child by night, thinking they had gained some rich booty, they find that they have stolen a newly-born infant, “all swatheled.” Lai troverent l’anffant, trestot anmaloté.
—Ibid. p. 80.
This custom of swatheling children in their infancy, though evidently injurious as well as ridiculous, has prevailed from a very early period, and is still practised in some parts of Europe. We can hardly doubt that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers swatheled their children, although the practice is not very clearly described by any of their writers. We derive the word itself from the Anglo-Saxon language, in which beswethan means to swathe or bind, suethe signifies a band or swathe, and swethel or swæthil, a swaddling-band. These words appear, however, to have been used in a more extensive sense among the Anglo-Saxons than their representatives in more recent times, and as I have not met with them applied in this restricted sense in Anglo-Saxon writers, I should not hastily assume from them that our early Teutonic forefathers did swathe their new-born children. In an Anglo-Saxon poem on the birth of Christ, contained in the Exeter Book (p. 45), the poet speaks of— Bearnes gebyrda, The child’s birth, þa he in binne wæs when he in the bin was in cildes hiw in a child’s form claþum biwunden. with cloths wound round. These words refer clearly to the practice of swaddling; and, though the Anglo-Saxon artist has not here portrayed his object very distinctly, we can hardly doubt that, in our cut (No. 34), taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Cædmon, the child, which its mother is represented as holding, is intended to be swathed.

The word bin, used in the lines of the Anglo-Saxon poem just quoted, which means a hutch or a manger, has reference, of course, to the circumstances of the birth of the Saviour, and is not here employed to signify a cradle. This last word is itself Anglo-Saxon, and has stood its ground in our language successfully against the influence of the Anglo-Norman, in which it was called a bers or bersel, from the latter of which is derived the modern French berçeau. Another name for a cradle was crib; a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 87) speaks of cild geong on crybbe (a young child in a cradle). Our cut No. 35, also taken from the manuscript of Cædmon, represents an Anglo-Saxon cradle of rather rude construction. The illuminators of a later period often represent the cradle of elegant form and richly ornamented. The Anglo-Saxon child appears here also to be swaddled, but it is still drawn too inaccurately to be decisive on this point. The latter illuminators were more particular and correct in their delineations, and leave no doubt of the universal practice of swaddling infants. A good example is given in our cut No. 36, taken from an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, of which a copy is given in the large work of the late M. du Sommerard.

There is a very curious paragraph relating to infants in the Pœnitentiale of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, which furnishes us with a singular picture of early Anglo-Saxon domestic life, for Theodore flourished in the latter half of the seventh century. It may be perhaps right to explain that a Pœnitentiale was a code of ecclesiastical laws directing the proportional degrees of penance for each particular class and degree of crimes and offences against public and private morals, and that these laws penetrate to the innermost recesses of domestic life. The Pœnitentiale of archbishop Theodore directs that “if a woman place her infant by the hearth, and the man put water in the cauldron, and it boil over, and the child be scalded to death, the woman must do penance for her negligence, but the man is acquitted of blame.”10 As this accident must have been of very frequent occurrence to require a particular direction in a code of laws, it implies great negligence in the Anglo-Saxon mothers, and seems to show that, commonly, at least at this early period, they had no cradles for their children, but laid them, swaddled as they were, on the ground close by the fire, no doubt to keep them warm, and that they left them in this situation.

We are not informed if there were any fixed period during which the infant was kept in swaddling-cloths, but probably when it was thought no longer necessary to keep it in the arms or in the cradle, it was relieved from its bands, and allowed to crawl about the floor and take care of itself. Walter de Bibblesworth, the Anglo-Norman writer of the thirteenth century already quoted, tells us briefly that a child is left to creep about before it has learnt to go on its feet:—

When the Anglo-Saxon youth, if a boy, had passed his infancy, he entered that age which was called cnithad (knighthood), which lasted from about eight years of age until manhood.

It is very rare that we can catch in history a glimpse of the internal economy of the Anglo-Saxon household. Enough, however, is told to show us that the Saxon woman in every class of society possessed those characteristics which are still considered to be the best traits of the character of Englishwomen; she was the attentive housewife, the tender companion, the comforter and consoler of her husband and family, the virtuous and noble matron. Home was her especial place; for we are told in a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 337) that, “It beseems a damsel to be at her board (table); a rambling woman scatters words, she is often charged with faults, a man thinks of her with contempt, oft her cheek smites.” In all ranks, from the queen to the peasant, we find the lady of the household attending to her domestic duties. In 686, John of Beverley performed a supposed miraculous cure on the lady of a Yorkshire earl; and the man who narrated the miracle to Bede the historian, and who dined with John of Beverley at the earl’s house after the cure, said, “She presented the cup to the bishop (John) and to me, and continued serving us with drink as she had begun, till dinner was over.” Domestic duties of this kind were never considered as degrading, and they were performed with a simplicity peculiarly characteristic of the age. Bede relates another story of a miraculous cure performed on an earl’s wife by St. Cuthbert, in the sequel of which we find the lady going forth from her house to meet her husband’s visitor, holding the reins while he dismounts, and conducting him in. The wicked and ambitious queen Elfthrida, when her step-son king Edward approached her residence, went out in person to attend upon him, and invite him to enter, and, on his refusal, she served him with the cup herself, and it was while stooping to take it that he was treacherously stabbed by one of her attendants. In their chamber, besides spinning and weaving, the ladies were employed in needlework and embroidery, and the Saxon ladies were so skilful in this art, that their work, under the name of English work (opus Anglicum), was celebrated on the continent. We read of a Saxon lady, named Ethelswitha, who retired with her maidens to a house near Ely, where her mother was buried, and employed herself and them in making a rich chasuble for the monks. The four princesses, the sisters of king Ethelstan, were celebrated for their skill in spinning, weaving, and embroidering; William of Malmesbury tells us that their father, king Edward, had educated them “in such wise, that in childhood they gave their whole attention to letters, and afterwards employed themselves in the labours of the distaff and the needle.” The reader will remember in the story of the Saxon queen Osburgha, the mother of the great Alfred, how she sat in her chamber, surrounded by her children, and encouraging them in a taste for literature. The ladies, when thus occupied, were not inaccessible to their friends of either sex. When Dunstan was a youth, he appears to have been always a welcome visitor to the ladies in their “bowers,” on account of his skill in music and in the arts. His contemporary biographer tells us of a noble lady, named Ethelwynn, who, knowing his skill in drawing and designs, obtained his assistance for the ornaments of a handsome stole which she and her women were embroidering. Dunstan is represented as bringing his harp with him into the apartment of the ladies, and hanging it up against the wall, that he might have it ready to play to them in the intervals of their work. Editha, the queen of Edward the Confessor, was well-known as a skilful needle-woman, and as extensively versed in literature. Ingulf’s story of his schoolboy-days, if it be true (for there is considerable doubt of the authenticity of Ingulf’s “History”), and of his interviews with queen Edith, gives us a curious picture of the simplicity of an Anglo-Saxon court, even at the latest period of their monarchy. “I often met her,” he says, “as I came from school, and then she questioned me about my studies and my verses; and willingly passing from grammar to logic, she would catch me in the subtleties of argument. She always gave me two or three pieces of money, which were counted to me by her handmaiden, and then sent me to the royal larder to refresh myself.”

Several circumstances arising out of certain rivalries of social institutions render it somewhat difficult to form an estimate of the moral character of the Anglo-Saxons. In the first place, before the introduction of Christianity, marriage was a mere civil institution, consisted chiefly in a bargain between the father of the lady and the man who sought her, and was completed with few formalities, except those of feasting and rejoicing. After the young lady was out of the control of her parents, the two sexes were on a footing of equality to each other, and the marriage tie was so little binding, that, in case of disagreement, it was at the will of either of the married couple to separate, in which case the relatives or friends of each party interfered, to see that right was done in the proportional repayment of marriage money, dowry, &c., and after the separation each party was at liberty to marry again. This state of things is well illustrated in the Icelandic story of the Burnt Njal, recently translated by Dr. Dasent, and it was not abolished by the secular laws, after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, marriage still continuing to be, in fact, a civil institution. But the higher clergy, at least, who were those who were most strongly inspired with the Romish sentiments, disapproved entirely of this view of the marriage state, and, although the Saxon priests appear not to have hesitated in being present at the second marriages after such separations, they were apparently forbidden by the ecclesiastical laws from giving their blessing to them.11 With such views of the conjugal relations, we cannot be surprised if the associating together of a man and woman, without the ceremonies of marriage, was looked upon without disgust; in fact, this was the case throughout western Europe during the middle ages, in spite of the doctrines of the church, and the offspring was hardly considered as dispossessed of legal rights. It would be easy to point out examples illustrating this state of things. Again, the priesthood among the unconverted Saxons was probably, as it appears among the Icelanders in the story of the Burnt Njal just alluded to, a sort of family possession,12 the priests themselves being what we should call family men; so that when the Anglo-Saxon people were Christians, and no longer pagans, the mass of the clergy, whatever may have been their sincerity as Christians, could not understand, or, at least, were unwilling to accept, the new Romish doctrine which required their celibacy. In both these cases, the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical writers, who are our chief authority on this subject, and were the most bigoted of the Romish party, speak in terms of exaggerated virulence, on the score of morality, against practices which the Anglo-Saxon people had not been used to consider as immoral at all. Thus, we should be led to believe, from the accounts of these ecclesiastical moralists, that the Anglo-Saxon clergy were infamous for their incontinence, whereas their declamations probably mean only that the Anglo-Saxon priests persisted in having wives and families. The secular laws contain frequent allusions to the continuance of principles relating to the marriage state, which were derived from the older period of paganism, and some of these are extremely curious. Thus, the laws of king Ethelred provide that a man who seduces another man’s wife, shall make reparation, not only as in modern times, by paying pecuniary damages, but also by procuring him another wife! or, in the words of the original, “If a freeman have been familiar with a freeman’s wife, let him pay for it with his wer-gild (the money compensation for the killing of a man), and provide another wife with his own money, and bring her home to the other.” By a law of king Ine, “if any man buy a wife (that is, if the bargain with her father has been completed), and the marriage take not place,” he was required to pay the money, besides other compensation. And again, by one of Alfred’s laws, it was provided, “If any one deceive an unbetrothed woman, and sleep with her, let him pay for her, and have her afterwards to wife; but if the father of the woman will not give her, let him pay money according to her dowry.” Regulations relating to the buying of a wife, are found in the Anglo-Saxon laws.

We learn nothing in the facts of history to the discredit of the Anglo-Saxon character in general. As in other countries, in the same condition of society, they appear capable of great crimes, and of equally great acts of goodness and virtue. Generally speaking, their least amiable trait was the treatment of their servants or slaves; for this class among the Anglo-Saxons were in a state of absolute servitude, might be bought and sold, and had no protection in the law against their masters and mistresses, who, in fact, had power of life and death over them. We gather from the ecclesiastical canons that, at least in the earlier periods of Anglo-Saxon history, it was not unusual for servants to be scourged to death by or by order of their mistresses. Some of the collections of local miracles, such as those of St. Swithun, at Winchester (of the tenth century), furnish us with horrible pictures of the cruel treatment to which female slaves especially were subjected. For comparatively slight offences they were loaded with gyves and fetters, and subjected to all kinds of tortures. Several of these are curiously illustrative of domestic manners. On one occasion, the maid-servant of Teothic the bell-maker (campanarius), of Winchester, was, for “a slight offence,” placed in iron fetters, and chained up by the feet and hands all night. Next morning she was taken out to be frightfully beaten, and she was put again into her bonds; but in the ensuing night she contrived to make her escape, and fled to the church to seek sanctuary at the tomb of St. Swithun, for being in a state of servitude there was no legal protection for her. On another occasion, a female servant had been stolen from a former master, and had passed into the possession of another master in Winchester. One day her former master came to Winchester, and the girl, hearing of it, went to speak to him. When her mistress heard that she had been seen to talk with a man from a distant province, she ordered her to be thrown into fetters, and treated very cruelly. Next day, while the mistress had gone out on some business, leaving her servant at home in fetters, the latter made her escape similarly to the sanctuary of the church. Another servant-girl in Winchester, taking her master’s clothes to wash in the river, was set upon by thieves, who robbed her of them. Her master, ascribing the mishap to her own negligence, beat her very severely, and then put her in fetters, from which she made her escape like the others. The interesting scene represented in our cut, No. 37, taken from the Harleian MS., No. 603, fol. 14, v^o., may be regarded as showing us the scourging of a slave. In a picture in Alfric’s version of Genesis, the man scourged, instead of being tied by the feet, is fixed by the body in a cloven post, in a rather singular manner. The aptness with which the Saxon ladies made use of the scourge is illustrated by one of William of Malmesbury’s anecdotes, who tells us that, when king Ethelred was a child, he once so irritated his mother, that not having a whip, she beat him with some candles, which were the first thing that fell under her hand, until he was almost insensible. “On this account he dreaded candles during the rest of his life, to such a degree that he would never suffer the light of them to be introduced in his presence!”

The cruelty of the Anglo-Saxon ladies to their servants offers a contrast to the generally mild character of the punishments inflicted by the Anglo-Saxon laws. The laws of Ethelred contain the following injunction, showing how contrary capital punishment is to the spirit of Anglo-Saxon legislation:—“And the ordinance of our lord, and of his witan (parliament), is, that Christian men for all too little be not condemned to death; but in general let mild punishment be decreed, for the people’s need; and let not for a little God’s handywork and his own purchase be destroyed, which he dearly bought.” This injunction is repeated in the laws of Canute. It appears that the usual method of inflicting death upon criminals was by hanging. Our cut, No. 38, taken from the illuminations to Alfric’s version of Genesis, represents an Anglo-Saxon gallows (galga), and the rather primitive method of carrying the last penalty of the law into effect. The early illuminated manuscripts give us few representations of popular punishments. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies enumerate the following implements of punishment, besides the galga, or gallows: fetters (fæter, cops), distinguished into foot-fetters and hand-fetters; shackles (scacul, or sceacul), which appear to have been used specially for the neck; a swipa, or scourge; ostig gyrd, a knotted rod; tindig, explained by the Latin scorpio, and meaning apparently a whip with knots or plummets at the end of thongs, like those used by the charioteers in the cuts in our next chapter; and an instrument of torture called a threpel, which is explained by the Latin equuleus. The following cut, No. 39, from the Harleian MS., No. 603 (so often quoted), shows us the stocks, generally placed by the side of the public road at the entrance to the town. Two other offenders are attached to the columns of the public building, perhaps a court-house, by apparently a rope and a chain. The Anglo-Saxon laws prescribe few corporal punishments, but substitute for them the payment of fines, or compensation-money, and these are proportioned to the offences with very extraordinary minuteness. Thus, to select a few examples from the very numerous list of injuries which may be done to a man’s person,—if any one struck off an ear, he was to pay twelve shillings, and, if an eye, fifty shillings; if the nose were cut through, the payment was nine shillings. “For each of the four front teeth, six shillings; for the tooth which stands next to them, four shillings; for that which follows, three shillings; and for all the others, a shilling each.” If a thumb were struck off, it was valued at twenty shillings. “If the shooting finger were struck off” (a term which shows how incorrectly it has been assumed that the Anglo-Saxons were not accustomed to the bow), the compensation was eight shillings; for the middle finger, four shillings; for the ring-finger, six shillings; and for the little finger eleven shillings. The thumb-nail was valued at three shillings; and the finger-nails at one shilling each.

We have little information on the secrets of the toilette of the Anglo-Saxons. We know from many sources that washing and bathing were frequent practices among them. The use of hot baths they probably derived from the Romans. The vocabularies give thermæ as the Latin equivalent. They are not unfrequently mentioned in the ecclesiastical laws, and in the canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, warm baths and soft beds are proscribed as domestic luxuries which tended to effeminacy. If these were really the thermæ of the Romans, it is perhaps the hostility of the ascetic part of the Romish clergy which caused them to be discontinued and forgotten. Our cut No. 37 represents a party at their ablutions. We constantly find among the articles in the graves of Anglo-Saxon ladies tweezers, which were evidently intended for eradicating superfluous hairs, a circumstance which contributes to show that they paid special attention to hair-dressing. To judge from the colour of the hair in some of the illuminations, we might be led to suppose that sometimes they stained it. The young men seem to have been more foppish and vain of their persons than the ladies, and some of the old chronicles, such as the Ely history, tell us (which we should hardly have expected) that this was especially a characteristic of the Danish invaders, who, we are told, “following the custom of their country, used to comb their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, often changed their clothes, and used many other such frivolous means of setting off the beauty of their persons.”13

There is every reason for believing that the Anglo-Saxon ladies were fond of gardens and flowers, and many allusions in the writings of that period intimate a warm appreciation of the beauties of nature. The poets not unfrequently take their comparisons from flowers. Thus, in a poem in the Exeter Book, a pleasant smell is described as being— Swecca swetast, Of odours sweetest, swylce on sumeres tid such as in summer’s tide stincað on stowum, fragrance send forth in places, staþelum fæste, fast in their stations, wynnum æfter wongum, joyously o’er the plains, wyrta geblowene blown plants hunig-flowende. honey-flowing. —Exeter Book, p. 178. And one of the poetical riddles in the same collection contains the lines— Ic eom on stence I am in odour strengre þonne ricels, stronger than incense, oþþe rosa sy, or the rose is, on eorþan tyrf which on earth’s turf wynlic weaxeð; pleasant grows; ic eom wræstre þonne heo. I am more delicate than it. þeah þa lilie sy though that the lily be leof mon-cynne, dear to mankind, beorht on blostman, bright in blossom, ic eom betre þonne heo. I am better than it. —Exeter Book, p. 423. So in another of these poems we read—

Fæger fugla reord, Sweet was the song of birds, folde geblowen, the earth was covered with flowers, geacas gear budon. cuckoos announced the year. —Ibid. p. 146.

Before we quit entirely the Saxon hall, and its festivities and ceremonies, we must mention one circumstance connected with them. The laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxons earnestly enjoined the duty of almsgiving, and a multitude of persons partook of the hospitality of the rich man’s mansion, who were not worthy to be admitted to his tables. These assembled at meal-times outside the gate of his house, and it was a custom to lay aside a portion of the provisions to be distributed among them, with the fragments from the table. In Alfric’s homily for the second Sunday after Pentecost, the preacher, after dwelling on the story of Lazarus, who was spurned from the rich man’s table, appeals to his Anglo-Saxon audience—“many Lazaruses ye have now lying at your gates, begging for your superfluity.” Bede tells us of the good king Oswald, that when he was once sitting at dinner, on Easter-day, with his bishop, having a silver dish full of dainties before him, as they were just ready to bless the bread, the servant whose duty it was to relieve the poor, came in on a sudden and told the king that a great multitude of needy persons from all parts were sitting in the streets begging some alms of the king. The latter immediately ordered the provisions set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish to be cut in pieces and divided among them. In the picture of a Saxon house given in our first chapter (p. 15), we see the lord of the household on a sort of throne at the entrance to his hall, presiding over the distribution of his charity. This seat, generally under an arch or canopy, is often represented in the Saxon manuscripts, and the chief or lord seated under it, distributing justice or charity. In the accompanying cut, No. 40, taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius, the lady Wisdom is represented seated on such a throne. It was, perhaps, the burh-geat-setl, or seat at the burh-gate, mentioned as characteristic of the rank of the thane in the following extract from a treatise on ranks in society, printed with the Anglo-Saxon laws: “And if a ceorl thrived, so that he had fully five hides of his own land, church (or perhaps private chapel), and kitchen (kycenan), bell-house, and burh-gate-seat, and special duty in the king’s hall, then was he thenceforth worthy of the dignity of thane.”

CHAPTER IV.
OUT OF DOOR AMUSEMENTS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.—HUNTING AND HAWKING.—HORSES AND CARRIAGES.—TRAVELLING.—MONEY-DEALINGS.

The progress of society from its first formation to the full development of civilization, has been compared not inaptly to the life of man. In the childhood and youth of society, when the population was not numerous, and a servile class performed the chief part of the labour necessary for administering to the wants or luxuries of life, people had a far greater proportion of time on their hands to fill up with amusements than at a later period, and many that are now considered frivolous, or are only indulged in at rare intervals of relaxation, then formed the principal occupations of men’s lives. We have glanced at the in-door amusements of the Anglo-Saxons in a previous chapter; but their out-door recreations, although we have little information respecting them, were certainly much more numerous. The multitude of followers who, in Saxon times, attended on each lord or rich man as their military chief, or as their domestic supporter, had generally no serious occupation during the greater part of the day; and this abundance of unemployed time was not confined to one class of society, for the artisan had to work less to gain his subsistence, and both citizen and peasant were excused from work altogether during the numerous holidays of the year.

That the Anglo-Saxons were universally fond of play (plega) is proved by the frequent use of the word in a metaphorical sense. They even applied it to fighting and battle, which, in the language of the poets, were plega-gares (play of darts), æsc-plega (play of shields), and hand-plega (play of hands).14 In the glossaries, plegere (a player), and plega-man (a playman), are used to represent the Roman gladiator; and plega-hús (a playhouse), and plega-stow (a play-place), express a theatre, or more probably an amphitheatre. Recent discoveries have shown that there was a theatre of considerable dimensions in the Roman town of Verulamium (near St. Alban’s); and old writers tell us there was one at the Silurian Isca (Caerleon), though these buildings were doubtless of rare occurrence; but every Roman town of any importance in the island had its amphitheatre outside the walls for gladiatorial and other exhibitions. The result of modern researches seems to prove that most of the Roman towns continued to exist after the Saxon settlement of the island, and we can have no doubt that the amphitheatres, at least for awhile, continued to be devoted to their original purposes, although the performances were modified in character. Some of them (like that at Richborough, in Kent, lately examined), were certainly surrounded by walls, while others probably were merely cut in the ground, and surrounded by a low embankment formed of the material thrown out. The first of these, the Saxons would naturally call a play-house, while the other would receive the no less appropriate appellation of a play-stow, or place for playing. Among the illustrations of the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl., No. 603), to which we have so often had occasion to refer, there is a very curious picture, evidently intended to represent an amphitheatre outside a town. It is copied in our cut No. 41. The rude Anglo-Saxon draughtsman has evidently intended to represent an embankment, occupied by the spectators, around the spot where the performances take place. The spectator to the left is expressing his approbation by clapping with his hands. The performances themselves are singular: we have a party of minstrels, one of them playing on the Roman double pipes, so often represented in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, while another is dancing to him, and the third is performing with a tame bear, which is at the moment of the representation simulating sleep. Games of this kind with animals, succeeded no doubt among the Saxons to the Roman gladiatorial fights, but few have imagined that the popular English exhibition of the dancing bear dated from so remote a period. The manuscripts show that the double pipe was in use among the Anglo-Saxons; with a little modification, and a bag or bellows to supply the place of the human lungs, this instrument was transformed into a bagpipe.