Not the least curious part of this picture is the town in the background, with its entrance gateway, and public buildings. The Anglo-Saxon draughtsmen were imperfectly acquainted with perspective, and paid little attention to proportion in their representations of towns and houses, a circumstance which is fully illustrated in this picture. As the artist was unable from this circumstance to represent the buildings and streets of a town in their relative position, he put in a house to represent a multitude of houses, and here he has similarly given one building within the walls to represent all the public buildings of the town. An exactly similar characteristic will be observed in our cut No. 42, taken from the same manuscript, where one temple represents the town. Here again we have a party of citizens outside the walls, amusing themselves as well as they can; some, for want of other employment, are laying themselves down listlessly on the ground.

The national sentiments and customs of the Anglo-Saxons would, however, lead to the selection of other places for the scenes of their games, and thus the Roman amphitheatres became neglected. Each village had its arena—its play-place—where persons of all ages and sexes assembled on their holidays to be players or lookers on; and this appears to have been usually chosen near a fountain, or some object hallowed by the popular creed, for customs of this kind were generally associated with religious feelings which tended to consecrate and protect them. These holiday games, which appear to have been very common among our Saxon forefathers, were the originals of our village wakes. Wandering minstrels, like those represented in our cut No. 41, repaired to them to exhibit their skill, and were always welcome. The young men exerted themselves in running, or leaping, or wrestling. These games attracted merchants, and gradually became the centres of extensive fairs. Such was the case with one of the most celebrated in England during the middle ages, that of Barnwell, near Cambridge. It was a large open place, between the town and the banks of the river, well suited for such festivities as those of which we are speaking. A spring in the middle of this plain, we are told in the early chartulary of Barnwell Abbey, was called Beornawyl (the well of the youths), because every year, on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the boys and youths of the neighbourhood assembled there, and, “after the manners of the English, practised wrestling and other boyish games, and mutually applauded one another with songs and musical instruments; whence, on account of the multitude of boys and girls who gathered together there, it grew a custom for a crowd of sellers and buyers to assemble there on the same day for the purpose of commerce.”15 This is a curious and a rather rare allusion to an Anglo-Saxon wake.

One of the great recreations of the Anglo-Saxons was hunting, for which the immense forests, which then covered a great portion of this island, gave a wide scope. The most austere and pious, as well as the most warlike, of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, were passionately attached to the pleasures of the chase. According to the writer who has assumed the name of Asser, the great Alfred was so attached to this amusement, that he condescended to teach his “falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers” himself. His grandson, king Ethelstan, as we learn from William of Malmesbury, exacted from the Welsh princes, among other articles of tribute, “as many dogs as he might choose, which, from their sagacious scent, could discover the retreats and hiding-places of wild beasts; and birds trained to make prey of others in the air.” The same writer tells us of the sainted Edward the Confessor, that “there was one earthly enjoyment in which he chiefly delighted, which was, hunting with fleet hounds, whose opening in the woods he used with pleasure to encourage; and again, with the pouncing of birds, whose nature it is to prey on their kindred species. In these exercises, after hearing divine service in the morning, he employed himself whole days.” It is evident from the ecclesiastical laws, that it was difficult to restrain even the clergy from this diversion. One of the ecclesiastical canons passed in the reign of king Edgar, enjoins “that no priest be a hunter, or fowler, or player at tables, but let him play on his books, as becometh his calling.” When the king hunted, it appears that men were employed to beat up the game, while others were placed at different avenues of the forest to hinder the deer from taking a direction contrary to the wishes of the hunter. Several provisions relating to the employment of men in this way, occur in the Domesday survey. A contemporary writer of the Life of Dunstan gives the following description of the hunting of king Edmund the Elder, at Ceoddri (Chedder). “When they reached the forest,” he says, “they took various directions along the woody avenues, and the varied noise of the horns, and the barking of the dogs, aroused many stags. From these, the king with his pack of hounds chose one for his own hunting, and pursued it long, through devious ways with great agility on his horse, with the hounds following. In the vicinity of Ceoddri were several steep and lofty precipices hanging over deep declivities. To one of these the stag came in his flight, and dashed headlong to his destruction down the immense depth, all the dogs following and perishing with him.” The king with difficulty held in his horse.

The dogs (hundas), used for the chase among the Anglo-Saxons, were valuable, and were bred with great care. Every noble or great landowner had his hund-wealh, or dog-keeper. The accompanying cut (No. 43), taken from the Harleian MS. No. 603, represents a dog-keeper, with his couple of hounds—they seem to have hunted in couples. The Anglo-Saxon name for a hunting-dog was ren-hund, a dog of chase, which is interpreted by greyhound; and this appears, from the cut, to have been the favourite dog of our Saxon forefathers. It appears by an allusion given above, that the Saxons obtained hunting dogs from Wales; yet the antiquary will be at once struck with the total dissimilarity of the dogs pictured in the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, from the British dogs represented on the Romano-British pottery. The dogs were used to find the game, and follow it by the scent; the hunters killed it with spears, or with bows and arrows, or drove it into nets. In the Colloquy of Alfric, a hunter (hunta) of one of the royal forests gives a curious account of his profession. When asked how he practises his “craft,” he replies, “I braid nets, and set them in a convenient place, and set on my hounds, that they may pursue the beasts of chase, until they come unexpectedly to the nets, and so become intangled in them, and I slay them in the nets.” He is then asked if he cannot hunt without nets, to which he replies, “Yes, I pursue the wild animals with swift hounds.” He next enumerates the different kinds of game which the Saxon hunter usually hunted—“I take harts, and boars, and deer, and roes, and sometimes hares.” “Yesterday,” he continues, “I took two harts and a boar, ... the harts with nets, and I slew the boar with my weapon.” “How were you so hardy as to slay a boar?” “My hounds drove him to me, and I, there facing him, suddenly struck him down.” “You were very bold then.” “A hunter must not be timid, for various wild beasts dwell in the woods.” It would seem by this, that boar-hunting was not uncommon in the more extensive forests of this island; but Sharon Turner has made a singular mistake, in supposing, from a picture in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, that boar-hunting was the ordinary occupation of the month of September. The scene which he has thus mistaken—or at least, a portion of it—is given in our cut No. 44 (from the Cottonian MS. Claudius, C. viii.); it represents swineherds driving their swine into the forests to feed upon acorns, which one of the herdsmen is shaking from the trees with his hand. The herdsmen were necessarily armed to protect the herds under their charge from robbers.

The Anglo-Saxons, as we have seen, were no less attached to hawking than hunting. The same Colloquy already quoted contains the following dialogue relating to the fowler (fugelere). To the question, “How dost thou catch birds?” he replies, “I catch them in many ways; sometimes with nets, sometimes with snares, sometimes with bird-lime, sometimes with whistling, sometimes with a hawk, sometimes with a trap.” “Hast thou a hawk?” “I have.” “Canst thou tame them?” “Yes, I can; of what use would they be to me unless I could tame them?” “Give me a hawk.” “I will give one willingly in exchange for a swift hound. What kind of hawk will you have, the greater or the lesser?”... “How feedest thou thy hawks?” “They feed themselves and me in winter, and in spring I let them fly to the wood, and I catch young ones in autumn and tame them.” A party of hawkers is represented in our cut No. 45, taken from the manuscript last quoted, where it illustrates the month of October. The rude attempt at depicting a landscape is intended to represent a river running from the distant hills into a lake, and the hawkers are hunting cranes and other water-fowl. Presents of hawks and falcons are not unfrequently mentioned in Anglo-Saxon writers; and in a will, an Anglo-Saxon leaves to his natural lord “two hawks and all his stag-hounds.”

The Saxon youths were proud of their skill in horsemanship. Bede relates an anecdote of the youthful days of Herebald, abbot of Tynemouth, when he attended upon bishop John of Beverley, from Herebald’s own words—“It happened one day,” the latter said, “that as we were travelling with him (the bishop), we came into a plain and open road, well adapted for galloping our horses. The young men that were with him, and particularly those of the laity, began to entreat the bishop to give them leave to gallop, and make trial of the goodness of their horses.... When they had several times galloped backwards and forwards, the bishop and I looking on, my wanton humour prevailed, and I could no longer refrain; but, though he forbade me, I struck in among them, and began to ride at full speed.” Horses were used chiefly by the upper classes of society in travelling. Two of a party of Saxon travellers are represented in our cut No. 46 (from MS. Cotton. Claudius, B. iv.). The lady, it will be observed, rides sideways, as in modern times, and the illuminated manuscripts of different periods furnish us with examples enough to show that such was always the practice; yet an old writer has ascribed the introduction of side-saddles into this country to Anne of Bohemia, the queen of Richard II., and the statement has been repeated by writers on costume, who too often blindly compile from one another without examining carefully the original sources of information.16 The next cut, No. 47 (taken from MS. Harl. No. 603), represents a horseman with his arms, the spear, and the round shield, with its boss, which reminds us of those frequently found in the early Anglo-Saxon graves. The horse furniture is tolerably well defined in these figures. The forms of the spur (spura) and the stirrup (called in Anglo-Saxon stirap and hlypa) are very peculiar. Most of the furniture of the horse was then, as now, of leather, and was made by the shoemaker (se sceowyrhta), who seems to have been the general manufacturer of articles in this material. Alfric’s Colloquy enumerates among the articles made by the shoemaker, bridle-thongs (bridel-thwancgas), harnesses (gerœda), spur-leathers (spur-lethera), and halters (hælfra). The form of the saddle is shown in the representation of a horse without a rider, given, from the manuscript last quoted, in our cut No. 48.

In the Anglo-Saxon church histories, we meet with frequent instances of persons, who were unable to walk from sickness or other cause, being carried in carts or cars, but in most cases these seem to have been nothing but the common agricultural carts adapted temporarily to this usage. A horse-litter is on one occasion used for the same purpose. It is certain, however, that the Anglo-Saxons had chariots for travelling. The usual names of all vehicles of this kind were wægn or wæn (from which, our waggon) and crat or cræt (which appears to be the origin of the English word cart). These two terms appear to have been used synonymously, for the words of the 18th Psalm, hi in curribus, are translated in one Anglo-Saxon version by on wænum, and in another by in crætum. The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts give us various representations of vehicles for travelling. The one represented in the cut No. 49 is taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Prudentius. It seems to have been a barbaric “improvement” upon the Roman biga, and is not much unlike our modern market-carts. The whip used by the lady who is driving so furiously, is of the same form as that used by the horsewoman in our cut No. 46. The artist has not shown the wægne-thixl, or shaft. A four-wheeled carriage, of rather a singular construction, is found often repeated, with some variations, in the illuminations of the manuscript of Alfric’s translation of the Pentateuch. One of them is given in our cut No. 50. It is quite evident that a good deal of the minor detail of construction has been omitted by the draughtsman. Anglo-Saxon glosses give the word rad to represent the Latin quadriga. From the same source we learn that the compound word wæn-fær, waggon-going, was used to express journeying in chariots.

Riding in chariots must have been rare among the Anglo-Saxons. Horses were only used by the better classes of society; and we learn from Bede and other writers that pious ecclesiastics, such as bishops Aidan, Ceadda, and Cuthbert, thought it more consistent with the humility of their sacred character to journey on foot. The pedestrian carried either a spear or a staff; the rider had almost always a spear. It is noted of Cuthbert, in Bede’s life of that saint, that one day when he came to Mailros (Melrose), and would enter the church to pray, having leaped from his horse, he “gave the latter and his travelling spear to the care of a servant, for he had not yet resigned the dress and habits of a layman.” The weapon was, no doubt, necessary for personal safety. There is a very curious clause in the Anglo-Saxon laws of king Alfred, relating to an accident arising from the carrying the spear, which we can hardly understand, although to require a special law it must have been of frequent occurrence; this law provides that “if a man have a spear over his shoulder, and any man stake himself upon it,” the carrier of the spear incurred severe punishment, “if the point be three fingers higher than the hindmost part of the shaft.” He was not considered blameable if he held the spear quite horizontally.

The traveller always wore a covering for his head, which, though of various shapes, none of which resembled our modern hat, was characterised by the general term of hæt. He seems to have been further protected against the inclemency of the weather by a cloak or mantle (mentel). One would be led to suppose that this outer garment was more varied in form and material than any other part of the dress, from the great number of names which we find applied to it, such as basing, hæcce, hæcela, or hacela, pæll, pylca, scyccels, wæfels, &c. The writings which remain throw no light upon the provisions made by travellers against rain; for the dictionary-makers who give scúr-scead (shower-shade) as signifying an umbrella, are certainly mistaken.17 Yet that umbrellas were known to the Anglo-Saxons is proved beyond a doubt by a figure in the Harleian manuscript, No. 603, which is given in our cut No. 51. A servant or attendant is holding an umbrella over the head of a man who appears to be covered at the same time with the cloak or mantle.

Travelling to any distance must have been rendered more uncomfortable, especially when passing through wild districts where there were no inns. The word inn is itself Saxon, and signified a lodging, but it appears to have been more usually applied to houses of this kind in towns. A tavern was also called a gest-hus or gest-bur, a house or chamber for guests, and cumena-hus, a house of comers. Guest-houses, like caravanserais in the East, appear to have been established in different parts of Saxon England, near the high roads, for the reception of travellers. A traveller in Bede arrives at a hospitium in the north of England, which was kept by a paterfamilias (or father of a family) and his household. In the Northumbrian gloss on the Psalms, printed by the Surtees Society, the Latin words of Psalm liv., in hospitiis eorum, are rendered by in gest-husum heara. This shows that Bede’s hospitium was really a guest-house: these guest-houses were kept up in various parts of England until Norman times; and Walter Mapes, in his treatise de Nugis Curialium, has preserved a story relating to one of William the Conqueror’s Saxon opponents, Edric the Wild, which tells how, returning from hunting in the forest of Dean, and accompanied only with a page, he came to a large house, “like the drinking houses of which the English have one in every parish, called in English gild-houses,” perhaps an error for guest-houses (quales Anglici in singulis singulas habebant diocesibus bibitorias, ghildhus Anglice dictas). It seems not improbable, also, that the ruins of Roman villas and small stations, which stood by the sides of roads, were often roughly repaired or modified, so as to furnish a temporary shelter for travellers who carried provisions, &c., with them, and could therefore lodge themselves without depending upon the assistance of others. A shelter of this kind—from its consisting of bare walls, a mere shelter against the inclemency of the storm—might be termed a ceald-hereberga (cold harbour), and this would account for the great number of places in different parts of England, which bear this name, and which are almost always on Roman sites and near old roads. The explanation is supported by the circumstance that the name is found among the Teutonic nations on the continent—the German Kalten-herberg—borne by some inns at the present day.

The deficiency of such comforts for travellers in Anglo-Saxon times was compensated by the extensive practice of hospitality, a virtue which was effectually inculcated by the customs of the people as well as by the civil and ecclesiastical laws. When a stranger presented himself at a Saxon door, and asked for board and lodging, the man who refused them was looked upon with contempt by his countrymen. In the seventh century, as we learn from the Pœnitentiale of archbishop Theodore, the refusal to give lodging to a stranger (quicunque hospitem non receperit in domum suam) was considered worthy of ecclesiastical censure. And in the Ecclesiastical Institutes, drawn up at a later period, and printed in the collection of Anglo-Saxon laws, it is stated that “It is also very needful to every mass-priest, that he diligently exhort and teach his parishioners that they be hospitable, and not refuse their houses to any wayfaring man, but do for his comfort, for love of God, what they then will or can; ... but let those who, for love of God, receive every stranger, desire not any worldly reward.” Bede describes as the first act of “the custom of hospitality” (mos hospitalitatis) the washing of the stranger’s feet and hands; they then offered him refreshment, and he was allowed to remain two nights without being questioned, after which period the host became answerable for his character. The ecclesiastical laws limited the hospitality to be shown to a priest to one night, because if he remained longer it was a proof that he was neglecting his duties.

Taverns of an ordinary description, where there was probably no accommodation for travellers, seem to have been common enough under the Anglo-Saxons and it must be confessed that there seems to be too much reason for believing that people spent a great deal of their leisure time in them; even the clergy appear to have been tempted to frequent them. In the Ecclesiastical Institutes, quoted above, mass-priests are forbidden to eat or drink at ale-houses (æt ceap-ealothelum). And it is stated in the same curious record that, “It is a very bad custom that many men practise, both on Sundays and also other mass-days; that is, that straightways at early morn they desire to hear mass, and immediately after the mass, from early morn the whole day over, in drunkenness and feasting they minister to their belly, not to God.”

Merchant travellers seem, in general, to have congregated together in parties or small caravans, both for companionship and as a measure of mutual defence against robbers. In such cases they probably carried tents with them, and formed little encampments at night, like the pedlars and itinerant dealers in later times. Men who travelled alone were exposed to other dangers besides that of robbery; for a solitary wanderer was always looked upon with suspicion, and he was in danger himself of being taken for a thief. He was compelled, therefore, by his own interest and by the law of the land, to show that he had no wish to avoid observation; one of the earlier Anglo-Saxon codes of laws, that of king Wihtræd, directed that “if a man come from afar, or a stranger go out of the high way, and he then neither shout nor blow a horn, he is to be accounted a thief, either to be slain, or to be redeemed.”

So prevalent, indeed, was theft and unfair dealing among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and so much litigation and unjust persecution arose from disputed claims to property which had been, or was pretended to have been, purchased, that it was made illegal to buy or sell without witnesses. It would be easy to multiply examples of robbery and plunder from Anglo-Saxon writers; but I will only state that, according to the Ely history, some merchants from Ireland, having come to Cambridge in the time of king Edgar, to offer their wares for sale, perhaps at the annual festivities of the Beorna-wyl, mentioned above, a priest of the place was guilty of stealing a part of their merchandise. We know but little of the trades and forms of commercial dealings of the Anglo-Saxons; but we may take our leave of the period of which we have been hitherto treating, with a few figures relating to money matters, from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Psalms (MS. Harl. No. 603). The cut No. 52 represents, apparently, a man in the market, or at the gates of a city, taking toll for merchandise. The scales are for weighing, not the merchandise, but the money. The word pund, or pound, implies that the money was reckoned by weight; and the word mancus, another term for a certain sum of money, is also considered to have been a weight. Anglo-Saxon writings frequently speak of money as given by weight. Our cut No. 53 is a representation of the merchant, or the toll-taker, seated before his account book, with his scales hanging to the desk. In the first of these cuts, a man holds the bag or purse, in which the money received for toll or merchandise is deposited. The cut No. 54 represents the receiver pouring the money out of his bag into the cyst, or chest, in which it is to be locked up and kept in his treasury. It is hardly necessary to say that there were no banking-houses among the Anglo-Saxons. The chest, or coffer, in which people kept their money and other valuables, appears to have formed part of the furniture of the chamber, as being the most private apartment; and it may be remarked that a rich man’s wealth usually consisted much more in jewels and valuable plate than in money.

We cannot but remark how little change the manners and the sentiments of our Saxon forefathers underwent during the long period that we are in any way acquainted with them. During the reign of Edward the Confessor, Norman fashions were introduced at court, but their influence on the nation at large appears to have been very trifling. Even after the Norman conquest the English manners and fashions retained their hold on the people, and at later periods they continually re-appear to assert their natural rights among the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons.

CHAPTER V.
THE EARLY NORMAN PERIOD.—LUXURIOUSNESS OF THE NORMANS.—ADVANCE IN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.—THE KITCHEN AND THE HALL.—PROVISIONS AND COOKERY.—BEES.—THE DAIRY.—MEAL-TIMES AND DIVISIONS OF THE DAY.—FURNITURE.—THE FALDESTOL.—CHAIRS AND OTHER SEATS.

A great change was wrought in this country by the entrance of the Normans. From what we have seen, in the course of the preceding chapters, society seems for a long time to have been at a standstill among the Anglo-Saxons, as though it had progressed as far as its own simple vitality would carry it, and wanted some new impulse to move it onwards. By the entrance of the Normans, the Saxon aristocracy was destroyed; but the lower and, in a great measure, the middle classes were left untouched in their manners and customs, which they appear to have preserved for a considerable length of time without any material change. The Norman historians, who write with prejudice when they speak of the Saxons, describe their nobility as having become luxurious without refinement; and they tell us that the Normans introduced greater sobriety, accompanied with more ostentation. “The nobility,” says William of Malmesbury, “was given up to luxury and wantonness.... Drinking in parties was an universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses; unlike the Normans and French, who, in noble and splendid mansions, lived with frugality. The vices attendant on drunkenness, which enervate the human mind, followed.... In fine, the English at that time (under king Harold) wore short garments, reaching to the mid-knee; they had their hair cropped, their beards shaven, their arms laden with golden bracelets, their skin adorned with punctured designs; they were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors; whose manners, in other respects, they adopted.”

Whatever moderation the Normans may have brought with them, or however they may have been restrained by the first Anglo-Norman monarch, it disappeared entirely under his son and successor: “when,” in the words of William of Malmesbury, “everything was so changed, that there was no man rich except the money-changer, and no clerks but lawyers.... The courtiers then preyed upon the property of the country people, and consumed their substance, taking the very meat from their mouths. Then was there flowing hair and extravagant dress; and then was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mince their gait, to walk with loose gesture, and half naked.” This increasing dissoluteness of manners appears to have received no effectual check under the reign of the first Henry; in the twenty-ninth year of which, the writer just quoted tells us that “a circumstance occurred in England, which may seem surprising to our long-haired gallants, who, forgetting what they were born, transform themselves into the fashion of females, by the length of their locks. A certain English knight, who prided himself on the luxuriance of his tresses, being conscience-stung on the subject, seemed to feel in a dream as though some person strangled him with his ringlets. Awaking in a fright, he immediately cut off all his superfluous hair. The example spread throughout England; and, as recent punishment is apt to affect the mind, almost all the barons allowed their hair to be cropped in a proper manner, without reluctance. But this decency was not of long continuance; for scarcely had a year expired, before all those who thought themselves courtly, relapsed into their former vice; they vied with women in length of locks, and wherever these were wanting, put on false tresses; forgetful, or rather ignorant, of the saying of the Apostle, ‘If a man nurture his hair, it is a shame to him.’” Public and private manners were gradually running into the terrible lawlessness of the reign of king Stephen.

William of Malmesbury points out as one of the more remarkable circumstances which distinguished the Normans from the Saxons, the magnitude and solidity of their domestic buildings. The Anglo-Saxons seem, indeed, to have preferred the old national prejudice of their race against confining themselves within stone walls, while the Normans and Franks, who were more influenced by Roman traditions, had become great builders. We have scarcely any information relative to the progress of domestic architecture under William the Conqueror, but the Norman chiefs seem from the first to have built themselves houses of a much more substantial character than those which they found in existence. The residence of the Conqueror, while engaged in his operations against the insurgents in the isle of Ely, is imperfectly described by the anonymous author of the life of Hereward. It consisted of the hall, kitchen, and other buildings, which were inclosed by hedges and fosses (per sepes et foveas), and it had an interior and exterior court. Towards the end of the Conqueror’s reign, and in that of his son, were raised those early Norman baronial castles, the masonry of which has withstood the ravages of so many centuries. Under William and his sons, few ordinary mansions and dwelling houses seem to have been built substantially of stone; I am not aware that there are any known remains of a stone mansion in this country older than the reign of Henry II. The miracles of St. Cuthbert, related by Reginald of Durham, contain one or two allusions to the private houses of the earlier part of the twelfth century. Thus a parishioner of Kellow, near Durham, in the time of bishop Walter Rufus (1133-1140), is described as passing the evening drinking with the parish priest; returning home late, he was pursued by dogs, and reaching his own house in great terror, contrived to shut the door (ostium domus) upon them. He then went up to what, from the context, appears to have been the window of an upper floor or garret (ad fenestram parietis), which he opened in order to look down with safety on his persecutors. He was suddenly seized with madness, and his family being roused, seized him, carried him down into the court (in area), and bound him to the seats (ad sedilia). The same writer tells the story of a blind woman in the city of Durham, who used to run her head against the projecting windows of the houses (ad fenestrarum dependentia foris laquearia).

We trace in the illuminations of the earlier Norman period the custom of placing the principal apartment at an elevation from the ground. The simple plan of the stone-built house of the latter part of this century, consisted of a square room on the ground floor, often vaulted, and of one room above it, which was the principal apartment, and the sleeping-room. This was approached by a staircase, sometimes external and sometimes internal, and it had a fire-place (cheminée), though this was not always the case in the room below. The lower room was the hall, and the upper apartment was called a solar, or soller (solarium), a word which has been supposed to be derived from sol, the sun, which was more felt in this upper room than in the lower, inasmuch as it was better lighted—it was the sunny room. Yet, even here, the windows were small, and without glass. We learn from Joscelin de Brakelonde that, in the year 1182, Samson, abbot of Bury, while lodging in a grange, or manor-house, belonging to his abbey, narrowly escaped being burnt with the house, because the only door of the upper story in which he was lodged happened to be locked, and the windows were too narrow to admit of his passing through them. In the early English “Ancren Riewle,” or rule of nuns, published by the Camden Society, there are several allusions to the windows of the parlour, or private room, which show that they were not glazed, but usually covered with a cloth, or blind, which allowed sufficient light to pass, and that they had shutters on hinges which closed them entirely. In talking of the danger of indulging the eyes, the writer of this treatise (p. 50) says, “My dear sisters, love your windows”—they are called in the original text thurles, holes through the wall—“as little as you may, and let them be small, and the parlour’s least and narrowest; let the cloth in them be twofould, black cloth, the cross white within and without.” The writer goes on to moralise on the white cross upon a black ground. In another part of the book (p. 97), the author supposes that men may come and seek to converse with the nuns through the window, and goes on to say, “If any man become so mad and unreasonable that he put forth his hand towards the windowcloth (the thurl-cloth), shut the window quickly and leave him.” Under the hall, when it was raised above the level of the ground, there was often another vaulted room, which was the cellar, and which seems to have been usually entered from the inside of the building. In the accompanying cut (No. 55), taken from the celebrated tapestry of Bayeux, are seen Harold and his companions carousing in an apartment thus situated, and approached by a staircase from without. The object of this was, perhaps, partly to be more private, for the ordinary public hall at dinner times seems to have been invaded by troops of hungry hangers on, who ate up or carried away the provisions which were taken from the table, and became so bold that they seem to have often seized or tried to seize the provisions from the cooks as they carried them to the table. William Rufus established ushers of the hall and kitchen, whole duty it was to protect the guests and the cooks from this rude rabble. Gaimar’s description of that king’s grand feast at Westminster, contains some curious allusions to this practice. After telling us that three hundred ushers (ussers, i.e. huissiers), or doorkeepers, were appointed to occupy the entrance passages (us), who were to hand with rods to protect the guests as they mounted the steps from the importunity of the garsons— Cil cunduaient les barons
Par les degrez, pur les garçons;
Od les verges k’es mains teneient
As barons vaie fesaient,
Ke jà garçon ne s’apremast,
Si alcon d’els ne l’ comandast—
he adds, that those who carried the provisions and liquor to the table were also attended by these ushers, that the “lecheurs” might not snatch from them, or spoil, or break, the vessels in which they carried them:—

In the cut from the Bayeux tapestry, the feasting-room is approached by what is evidently a staircase of stone. In our cut No. 56, taken from a manuscript of the earlier half of the twelfth century in the Cottonian library (Nero, C. iv.), and illustrating the story of the marriage feast at Cana, the staircase is apparently of wood, little better than a ladder, and the servants who are carrying up the wine assist themselves in mounting by means of a rope. It is a picture which at the same time exhibits several characteristics of domestic life—the wine vessels, the cupboard in which they are kept, and the well in the court-yard, the latter being indicated by the tree. The butler, finding wine run short, sends the servant to draw water from the well. It may be remarked that this appears to have been the common machinery of the draw-well among our forefathers in the middle ages—a rude lever, formed by the attachment of a heavy weight, perhaps of lead, at one end of the beam, which was sufficient to raise the other end, and thus draw up the bucket. It occurs in illuminations in manuscripts of various periods; our example in cut No. 57 is taken from MS. Harl. No. 1257, of the fourteenth century.

Whatever truth there may be in William of Malmesbury’s account of the sobriety of the Normans, there can be no doubt that the kitchen and the cooks formed with them a very important part of the household. According to the Bayeux tapestry, duke William brought with him from Normandy a complete kitchen establishment, and a compartment of that interesting monument, of which we here give a diminished copy, shows that when he landed he found no difficulty in providing a dinner. On the left two cooks are boiling the meat—for this still was the general way of cooking it, as it was usually eaten salted. Above them, on a shelf, are fowls, and other sorts of small viands, spitted ready for roasting. Another cook is engaged at a portable stove, preparing small cakes, pasties, &c., which he takes from the stove with a singularly formed fork to place them on the dish. Others are carrying to the table the roasted meats, on the spits. It will be observed that having no “board” with them to form a table, the Norman knights make use of their shields instead.

The reader of the life of Hereward will remember the scene in which the hero in disguise is taken into king William’s kitchen, to entertain the cooks. After dinner the wine and ale were distributed freely, and the result was a violent quarrel between the cooks and Hereward; the former used the tridents and forks for weapons (cum tridentibus et furcis), while he took the spit from the fire (de foco hastile) as a still more formidable weapon of defence. In the early Chanson de Roland, Charlemagne is described also carrying his cooks with him to the war, as William the Conqueror is pictured in the Bayeux tapestry, and they held so important a position in his household, that, when one of his most powerful barons, Guenelon, was accused of treason, Charlemagne is made to deliver him in custody to the charge of his cooks, who place him under the guard of a hundred of the “kitchen companions,” and these treat him much in the same way as king William’s cooks sought to treat Hereward, by cutting or plucking out his beard and whiskers.

Alexander Neckam, in his Dictionarius (written in the latter part of the twelfth century), begins with the kitchen, as though he considered it as the most important part of a mansion, and describes its furniture rather minutely. There is good reason, however, for believing that the cooking was very commonly performed in the court of the house in the open air and perhaps it was intended to be represented so in the scene given above from the Bayeux tapestry. The cooks are there delivering the food through a door into the hall.

The Norman dinner-table, as shown in the Bayeux tapestry, differs not much from that of the Anglo-Saxons. A few dishes and basins contain viands which are not easy to be recognised, except the fish and the fowls. Most of the smaller articles seem to have been given by the cooks into the hands of the guests from the spits on which they had been roasted. Another dinner scene is represented in our cut No. 59, taken from the Cottonian manuscript already mentioned (Nero, C. iv.). We see again similarly formed vessels to those used at table by the Anglo-Saxons. The bread is still made in round flat cakes, and is marked with a cross, and with a flower in the middle. The guests use no forks; their knives are different and more varied in their forms than under the Anglo-Saxons. Sometimes, indeed, the shape of the knives is almost grotesque. The one represented below, in our cut No. 60, is taken from a group in the same manuscript which furnished the preceding cut; it is very singularly notched at the point.

We see in these dinner scenes that the Anglo-Normans used horns and cups for drinking, as the Anglo-Saxons did; but the use of the horn is becoming rare, and the bowl-shaped vessels appear to have been now the usual drinking cup. Among the wealthy these cups seem to have been made of glass. Reginald of Durham describes one of the monks as bringing water for a sick man to drink in a glass cup (vase vitreo), which was accidentally broken. In a splendidly illuminated manuscript of the Psalms, of the earlier half of the twelfth century, written by Eadwine, one of the monks of Canterbury, and which will afford much illustration for this period,18 we find a figure of a servant giving to drink, who holds one of the same description of drinking cups which were so popular at an earlier period among the Anglo-Saxons (see our cut No. 61). He holds in the left hand the jug, which had now become the usual vessel for carrying the liquor in any quantity. In our cut No. 62, furnished by the same manuscript as the preceding, the servant is taking the jug of liquor from the barrel. Our next cut, No. 63, also taken from the Cambridge MS., represents several forms of vessels for the table. Some of these are new to us; and they are on the whole more elegant than most of the forms we meet with in common pictures.