Chapter VIII: Part 8

In the Doucean Museum, at Goodrich Court, there is a set of roundels, similar to the above, which appear, by the badge of the rose and the pomegranate conjoined, to be of the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. Possibly, they may have been introduced with many foreign "conceits" and luxuries from France and Germany, during that reign. In the times of Elizabeth, mention first occurs of fruit dishes of any ornamental ware, the service of the table having previously been performed with dishes, platters, and saucers of pewter, and "treens," or wooden trenchers; or, in more stately establishments, with silver plate. Shakspeare makes mention of "china dishes;" but it is more probable that they were of the ornamental ware fabricated in Italy, and properly termed _Majolica_, than of Oriental porcelain. The first mention of "porselyn" in England occurs in 1587-8, when its rarity was so great, that a porringer and cup of that costly ware were selected as New Year's gifts presented to the Queen by Burghley and Cecil. Shortly after, mention is made by several writers of "earthen vessels painted; costly fruit dishes of fine earth painted; fine dishes of earth painted; such as are brought from Venice."

Those elegant Italian wares, which in France appear to have superseded the more homely appliances of the festive table, about the middle of the sixteenth century, were doubtless adopted at the tables of the higher classes in our own country, towards its close.

The wooden fruit-trencher was not, however, wholly disused during the seventeenth century; and amongst sets of roundels which may be assigned to the reign of James I. or Charles I. may be mentioned a set exhibited in the Museum formed during the meeting of the Archæological Institute at York, in 1846. They were purchased at a broker's shop at Bradford, Yorkshire: in dimensions they resemble the trenchers of the reign of Elizabeth, already described; but their decoration is of a more ordinary character. On each tablet is pasted a line engraving, of coarse execution, and gaudily coloured, representing one of the Sibyls.[55]

The common trencher which most of us have seen in use, was a wooden platter employed instead of metal, china, or earthen plates. It was even considered a stride of luxury when trenchers were often changed in one meal. "And with an humble chaplain it was expressly stipulated," says Bishop Hall, "that he never change his trencher twice." The term "a good trencher-man" was then equivalent to a hearty feeder (Nares's _Glossary_). Maple-wood, being soft and white, was formerly in great request for trenchers.

Fosbroke remembered when no other but wooden dishes of this kind were used in farm-houses in Shropshire. The general form of the trencher was round; yet the _trencher-cap_ of our Universities has a square top.

VEGETABLES.

Very few esculent plants are mentioned in the Accounts of the Middle Ages. Dried peas and beans, parsley, fennel, onions, green peas, and new beans, are the only species named. Pot-herbs, of which the names are not specified, but which served eleven days, cost 6_d_. There is much uncertainty upon the subject of the cultivation of vegetables, in this country, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Cresses, endive, lettuces, beets, parsnips, carrots, cabbages, leeks, radishes, and cardoons, were grown in France during the reign of Charlemagne; but it is doubtful whether many of these varieties had penetrated into England at that early period. The most skilful horticulturists of the Middle Ages were ecclesiastics, and it is possible that in the gardens of monasteries many vegetables were reared which were not in common use among the laity. Even in the fifteenth century, the general produce of the English kitchen garden was contemptible when compared with that of the Low Countries, France, and Italy. Gilbert Kymer can enumerate only, besides a few wild and forgotten sorts, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, beetroot, trefoil, bugloss, borage, celery, purslane, fennel, smallage, thyme, hyssop, parsley, mint, a species of turnip, and small white onions. According to him, all these plants were boiled with meat. He observes also that some were eaten raw, in spring and summer, with olive-oil and spices, but questions the propriety of the custom. This is, perhaps, the earliest notice extant of the use of salads in England.

The subject of the supplies of the table with food is a very large one; and leaves us but space to remark that the condition of food, an important point of its worth, must have suffered from the slow mode of conveyance in former times. The advantages which we enjoy in this age of rapid transit have been thus cleverly illustrated by a contemporary:--"A little more than half a century ago it took about six weeks to drive the herds of cattle from the north of Scotland to the metropolis: now they can be whirled here in a few hours. Fish in great variety may be caught in the morning on the coast of Berwick and Coquet, and be boiling in the kitchens of Belgravia on the same evening for dinner. In exchange for the sheep and beeves from the highlands and Cheviot, the choice fruits and early vegetables of the south are rapidly passed. By means of steamships and other quick sailing vessels, the oranges of Spain and Portugal, the grapes of France and Italy, and the oxen, sheep, fruits, &c. of other foreign parts are brought in fine condition; and delicacies which were not easily obtained even by the rich are now common amongst the multitude. But for this increased facility of conveyance how would it be possible to feed the immense multitude of London, which, in half a century of time, will in all probability number 5,000,000?"

ANTIQUITY OF CHEESE.

Cheese and curdling of milk are mentioned in the Book of Job. David was sent by his father, Jesse, to carry ten cheeses to the camp, and to see how his brethren fared. "Cheese of kine" formed part of the supplies of David's army at Mahanaim during the rebellion of Absalom. Homer makes cheese form part of the ample stores found by Ulysses in the cave of the Cyclop Polyphemus. Euripides, Theocritus, and other early poets, mention cheese. Ludolphus says that excellent cheese and butter were made by the ancient Ethiopians. Strabo states that some of the ancient Britons were so ignorant that, though they had abundance of milk, they did not understand the art of making cheese. There is no evidence that any of these ancient nations had discovered the use of rennet in making cheese; they appear to have merely allowed the milk to sour, and subsequently to have formed the cheese from the caseous part of the milk, after expelling the serum or whey. As David, when too young to carry arms, was able to run to the camp with ten cheeses, ten loaves, and an ephah of parched corn, the cheeses must have been very small.

Thomas Coghan, in _The Haven of Health_, 1584, says: "What cheese is well made or otherwise may partly be perceived by an old Latin verse translated thus--'Cheese should be white as snowe is, nor ful of eyes as Argos was, nor old as Mathusalem was, nor rough as Esau was, nor full of spots as Lazarus.' Master Tusser, in his book of Husbandrie, addeth 'other properties also of cheese well made, which whoso listeth may reade. Of this sort, for the most part, is that which is made about Bamburie in Oxfordshire; for of all the cheese (in my judgment) it is the best, though some prefer Cheshire cheese made about Nantwich, and others also commend more the cheese of other countries; but Bamburie cheese shall goe for my money, for therein (if it be of the best sort) you shall neither tast the renet nor salt, which be two speciall properties of good cheese. Now who is so desirous to eat cheese must eate it after other meate, and in a little quantity. A pennyweight, according to the old saying, is enough; for being thus used it bringeth two commodities. First, It strengthened a weake stomache. Secondly, It maketh other meates to descend into the chief place of digestion; that is, the bosome of the stomache, which is approved in "Schola Salerni." But old and hard cheese is altogether disallowed, and reckoned among those ten manner of meates which ingender melancholy, and bee unwholesome for sick folkes, as appeareth before in the chapter of Beefe.'"

The county of Chester was, ages since, famous for the excellence of its cheese. It is stated that the Countess Constance of Chester (reign of Henry II., 1100), though the wife of Hugh Lupus, the King's first cousin, kept a herd of kine, _and made good cheese_, three of which she presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Giraldus Cambrensis, in the twelfth century, bears honourable testimony to the excellence of the Cheshire cheese of his day.

Cheshire retains its celebrity for cheese-making: the pride of its people in the superiority of its cheese may be gathered from the following provincial song, with the music, published in 1746, during the Spanish war, in the reign of George II.

"A Cheshire-man sailed into Spain,
To trade for merchandise:
When he arrivèd from the main
A Spaniard him espies.

"Who said, 'You English rogue, look here--
What fruits and spices fine
Our land produces twice a year!
Thou hast not such in thine.'

"The Cheshire-man ran to his hold,
And fetched a Cheshire cheese,
And said, 'Look here, you dog! behold,
We have such fruits as these!

"'Your fruits are ripe but twice a year,
As you yourself do say;
But such as I present you here,
Our land brings twice a day.'

"The Spaniard in a passion flew,
And his rapier took in hand;
The Cheshire-man kicked up his heels,
Saying, 'Thou art at my command!'

"So never let a Spaniard boast,
While Cheshire-men abound,
Lest they should teach him, to his cost,
To dance a Cheshire round!"[56]

Next to Cheshire rank Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, for their cheese. In the latter county they have the proverb:

"If you wid have a good cheese, and hav'n old,
You must turn 'n seven times before he is old."

To curdle the milk in cheese-making was formerly used the _Galium verum_ of botanists, a wild flower with square stems, shining whorled leaves, and loose panicles of small yellow flowers, popularly known as _Cheese Rennet_.

The practice of mixing sage and other herbs, and the flowers or seeds of plants, with cheese, was common among the Romans; and this led to the herbs, &c. being worked into heraldic devices in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne once ate cheese mixed with parsley-seeds at a bishop's palace, and liked it so much, that ever after he had two cases of such cheese sent yearly to Aix-la-Chapelle. Our pastoral poet of the last century has noted this device:

"Marbled with sage, the hardened cheese she pressed."--GAY.

ALE AND BEER.

The virtues of Saxon ale have already been commemorated, at pp. 66-68. We return to the subject, at a later period.

"It may be remarked," says Mr. Hudson Turner, "that in the thirteenth century the English had no certain principle as to the grain best suited for brewing. A roll of household expenses of the Countess of Leicester shows that Beer was made indiscriminately of barley, wheat, and oats, and sometimes of a mixture of all. As the Hop was not used we may conjecture that the produce of their brewing was rather insipid, and not calculated for long keeping: it was drunk as soon as made. To remove the mawkish flatness of such beer it was customary to flavour it with spices and other strong ingredients: long pepper continued to be used for this purpose some time after the introduction of hops. The period at which the last-named plant became an ingredient of English beer is not precisely known. It was cultivated from a very early date in Flanders and Belgium, where it was both employed in brewing, and eaten in salads; and from those countries it was imported into England while the produce of our own hop-grounds was inconsiderable. It would appear, however, that Hops were used in this country for brewing, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, as Gilbert Kymer, in his _Dietary_, pronounces beer brewed from barley, and well hopped, also of middling strength, thin and clear, well fined, well boiled, and neither too new or too old, to be a sound and wholesome beverage. It is pretty certain, nevertheless, that in his time the hop was not _grown_ in England. In ancient days brewing was almost solely managed by women, and till the close of the fifteenth century the greater part of the beer-houses in London were kept by females who brewed what they sold."

Ale, the favourite drink of our Saxon forefathers, has been described as a thick, sweet, _unhopped_ liquor, and as such distinguished from our modern _hopped_ "beer." Gerard says: "The manifold virtues in hops do manifestly argue the wholesomeness of _beer_ above _ale_;" and conjectures that the origin of this distinction may be due to the use of the word beer in the Low Countries, from which hops were introduced. It would appear, however, that beer was known in this country, and specified as such, before the use of hops; which were not imported till 1524, other bitters having supplied their place.

There is an ancient rhyme which says,--

"Turkeys, Carps, _Hops_, Piccarel, and _Beer_,
Came into England all in one year."

The year when all these good things are supposed to have been introduced, was somewhere in the early part of the reign of King Henry VIII. But it is evident that as early as 1440, when the _Parvulorum Promptorium_ was compiled, the use of hops was not altogether unknown. Mr. Albert Way supposes that at that time hopped beer was either imported from abroad or brewed by foreigners. And this supposition is certainly supported by the _Promptorium_.

The great hop county of Kent produced better ale than any other; and the large quantity of ale found in the cellars of the Kentish gentry, had much to do with fomenting Jack Cade's rebellion, which arose in Kent.

Unhopped ale, having no bitter principle, would easily run into acetous fermentation. And this is the reason why, in old family receipt-books, we find that our great-grandmothers were in the habit of using alegar where, by the cooks of the present day, vinegar is employed.

In modern usage the distinction between _Ale_ and _Beer_ is different in various parts of the country. But originally, the distinction was very clearly marked: _Ale_ being a liquor brewed from _malt_, to be drunk fresh; _Beer_, a liquor brewed from _malt and hops_, intended to keep.

The above distinction is clearly observed in Johnson's _Dictionary_, where _ale_ is defined, "A liquor made by infusing _malt_ in hot water, and then fermenting the liquor:" _Beer_, "Liquor made _from malt and hops_;" "distinguished from ale either by being older or smaller." Ale thus defined answers to the description given by Tacitus of the drink of the ancient Germans. The ancient Spaniards had a somewhat similar drink, called by them _Celia_.

M. Alphonse Esquiros writes of our national drink thus amusingly:--"It was the favourite fluid of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, whom we have seen descend in turn on Great Britain. Before their conversion to Christianity, they believed that one of the chief felicities the heroes admitted after death into Odin's paradise enjoyed, was to drink long draughts of ale from tall cups. Archæologians have made learned and laborious researches to recover the history of beer in Great Britain: it will be sufficient for us to say, that in Wales, ale, even small, was formerly regarded as a luxury, and was only seen on the tables of the great. In England, about the middle of the sixteenth century, Harrison assures us that, when tradesmen and artisans had the good fortune to stumble on a haunch of venison and a glass of strong ale, they believed themselves as magnificently treated as the lord mayor. At the present day, what a change! Ale and porter flow into the pewter pots of the humblest taverns; rich and poor--the poor more frequently than the rich--refresh themselves with the national beverage, as the Israelites in the Desert slaked their thirst at the water leaping from the rock, to quote a minister of the English Church. This abundance compared with the old penury, rejoices the social economist from a certain point of view, for he sees in it the natural movement of science, trade and agriculture, which in time places within reach of the most numerous class articles which, at the outset, were regarded as luxuries. Not only has beer become more available to the working classes, but the quality has improved, and at the present day English beer knows no rival on the Continent."

The old compound of roasted apples, ale, and sugar, which our ancestors knew as "Lamb's Wool," is thought to have derived its name as follows:--The words La Mas Ubal are good Irish, signifying the Feast, or day, of the Apple, and, pronounced _Lamasool_, soon passed into Lamb's Wool. The mixture was drunk on the evening of the above day, which was supposed to be presided over by the guardian angel of fruits and seeds.

A less fanciful etymology points to the above drink being named from its smoothness and softness, resembling the wool of lambs. Herrick sings:

"Now crowne the bowle
With gentle lambs-wooll,
Add sugar, and nutmegs, and ginger;"

and in an old play we read of this addition: "Lay a crab in the fire to roast for lamb's-wool."

FOOTNOTES:

[51] In the Sandwich and many of the islands of the Pacific, every child has a piece of sugar-cane in its hand; while in our own sugar colonies the negro becomes fat in crop time on the abundant juice of the ripening cane. This mode of using the cane is, no doubt, the most ancient of all, and was well known to the Roman writers. Lucan (book iii. 237) speaks of the eaters of the cane, as "those who drink sweet juice from the tender reed."

[52] It is remarkable, that the first house at which Coffee was first sold in England, the Angel, Oxford, and the first house at which Tea was sold in England, Garraway's, in Change Alley, London, were both taken down in the same year--1866.

[53] _Things not Generally Known._ Second Series.

[54] Harrison's _Description of England_, c. vi.; Holinshed's _Chron._ ii. 171.

[55] Abridged from a paper by Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A.; _Archæological Journal_, vol. ii. pp. 332-339.

[56] Dogget, the actor, who bequeathed the Coat and Badge, to be rowed for annually on the Thames, was noted for dancing the Cheshire Round, as he is represented in his portrait.

IV. Peasant Life.[57]

Few inquiries of social interest better show the progress of the English people than glances at their condition at various periods of their history. Here we may trace the rise of the people from rude forms of civilization, through its various grades, to the blessings of industry and independence, which have so materially contributed to the character of our National Life. Commencing with the substratum of these social changes, we are reminded of the truth of Goldsmith's oft-quoted lines:

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied."

In early times freemen formed a mere section of the people, and the bulk of the English population were in a servile condition. Some of the bondmen were captives, or the children of captives; others had been reduced to servitude by distress, by debts, or crimes; but they were not all of them absolute slaves, for even amongst the convicts there were some who were not slaves, but serfs. Now, in acquiring the use of land, a slave made the first step towards freedom. In this manner a _thrall-bred_ man became _boor-bred_, and although still a bondman--he might hope, by good conduct or by the lord's bounty, to rise to the higher condition of a geneatman, or free farmer, and even to become a freeman, and a freeholder,--to become the absolute owner of his little croft.

In Anglo-Saxon times, the political station of a freeman was determined by his _were_--it was his worth or value; and the _wergyld_ was the fine paid in compensation of his life. The abolition or disuse of this fine was an encouragement of liberty, since it removed the strongest mark of distinction between freemen and non-freemen.

The free or unfree condition of a man descended to his posterity. At the close of the thirteenth century, many peasants in England were still affected by the crimes or the misfortunes of their remote ancestors. By that time there was an end of absolute slavery, and the bondsmen were all serfs, or the children of serfs.

OPERATIVE TENANTS.

Villenage and operative tenancy were almost extinct at the time of the Reformation. The few villeins, or operative tenants, then remaining, were in the occupation of small plots of land, or were, in fact, agricultural labourers, working for wages, rather than tenants _paying their rent in labour_. They were scarcely to be found except upon Church-lands, or upon lands which had lately belonged to the Church.

An operative tenant of five acres usually worked once a week for the lord. We learn from Domesday that bordars were tenants of five acres, and that the bordars under the Castle of Ewias worked once a week: the Saxon cottar held at least five acres, and was accustomed to work for the lord every Monday. This custom prevailed in later times. If a tenant worked for the lord once a week, the working-day was commonly Monday. The Monday-men at East Brent, in Somerset, had the following customs in the year 1517:--Each of them, by ancient usage, should annually, in forty days selected by the lord's steward, do forty works of summer and winter husbandry, called Monday-works, working and labouring well each day for six whole hours; each of them receiving, while at work, a halfpenny, the sum of which is twenty pence per annum: and each of them who should do eight autumnal works, working well six hours a day as before said, should receive one penny a day. At the same time there were Monday-men at Limpesham in the same county; and they are noticed in earlier rentals at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, at Leighton in Huntingdonshire, in East Kent, and at Bocking and Hadleigh in the eastern counties.

At Bury St. Edmund's anciently, there were humble servitors called Lancetts, who were bound by their tenure to clean the chambers of the monastery. A tenant of the abbey at Cokefield, whose tenure is not called lancettage, was obliged to thatch, to wattle and daub, to do carpenter's work, to collect compost, to clean houses, &c.--but was not required to clean out the lord's _latrines_.

Although villeins were said to hold their land at the will of the lord, their position was not really precarious; they did not hold at the lord's arbitrary will, but at the will of the lord subject to the custom of the manor. While they paid their dues and performed their services, the lord could not molest them; if the lord ejected a sick villein, the villein was emancipated. For trivial offences the villein was amerced, or was at the lord's mercy; that is, was obliged to pay a fine assessed by a jury who were sworn to spare no one for love or fear, and to punish no one too severely; for disobedience and disloyalty the lord could set his villein in the stocks; if others then came and broke the stocks to let the villein out, the lord could have an action of trespass: the stocks were chiefly designed for vagrants and unruly servants.

At one time the ties which bound a peasant to his landlord were like those which bound a soldier to his martial chief. Dependence on a lord was thought no degradation, and the state of society made independence impossible. The feudal system was exhausted as soon as the law became strong enough to protect an independent man.

SERVICES OF TILLAGE.

We now proceed to the several services. _Grass-erth_, or the service of Tillage, was in return for the privilege of feeding cattle in the lord's open pastures. The Saxon boor ploughed two acres, and might be allowed to plough more if he required more pasture.

At Sturminster Newton in Dorsetshire, certain tenants came upon the lord's grass-land on the morrow of St. Martin's Day with as many teams of oxen as they could bring, and they ploughed four acres of the land with each team; they brought seed from the hall to sow the land, and afterwards harrowed it. This service entitled them to feed their oxen with the lord's oxen, from the time that the meadows were mown until the cattle were housed. The lord might, in the meantime, raise no hedge, and might make no several pasture in the fallow-field, to exclude the cattle of the tenantry.

The Saxon boor, in addition to grass-erth, ploughed three acres of gafolyrthe: that is, ploughing alone in satisfaction of his gayfol, or rent; as well as three acres of benyrthe, or optional tillage, done as a _boon_ to the lord,--done out of grace and kindness, not in the way of duty.

A large part of the lord's arable land was entirely cultivated by the tenantry. The customary tenants at Cokefield, near Bury, ploughed 200 acres; or rather, they ploughed each acre more than once, and their labour was equal to the single tillage of 200 acres.

In large manors, it was the duty of the reeve to ascertain whether a tenant intended to do the service, or chose rather to pay for a substitute. The reeve had to deal with persons of both sexes, and of all conditions. Some of the contributors of labour were knights, and gentlemen, and ladies of quality; others were independent yeomen, surly farmers, and poor widows. This arrangement was called an _arable precation_. The _gathering of the ploughs_ must have been a remarkable sight. Soon after dawn, on the appointed day the tenants met the lord's officers in the field. Tenants who came without oxen, were employed in delving and in making fences; tenants who came with single oxen or with less than an entire team, were associated with others; and thus all the oxen and cart-horses present were sorted in teams of about eight animals. The teams were marshalled by a beadle, who carried his wand of office, not quite a bare symbol of authority, for, we dare say, it was used upon inert husbandmen as well as upon inert oxen. The reeve took care that each team did its full work: that the ploughmen worked as well for the lord as they would work for themselves; and that the teams were not unyoked until the work had been fairly done. The day's work was supposed to be completed at the ninth hour,--three in the afternoon, according to our reckoning. This hour was called high noon, and the meal then taken was called a noonshun or nuncheon. Some of the ploughmen had a meal from the lord, but there was no regular feast; a tenant employed in the lord's service was not usually entitled to a meal, unless the service kept him occupied an entire day. A boon-harrowing, with horses, succeeded; each horse that harrowed was allowed two or three handfuls of oats. In due time there followed a bedweding, or weeding boon.

There were small services, such as threshing, thatching, delving, building, and enclosing. A tenant made two perches, or eleven yards, of dyke. A tenant at Darent, near Rochester, in the thirteenth century, did two perches of enclosure around the court, and seven perches of Racheie around the lord's corn. Then there was the service of enclosing the hall-garth or courtyard. The tenants are still obliged to keep up a stone wall round the site of the manor-house at Brotherton, in Norfolk; the mansion itself disappeared long ago. The fencing of a park was in some places distributed among a number of townships, each undertaking to maintain so many rods of paling; this was the custom at Pilton, in Somerset, where there was a deer-park belonging to the Abbot of Glastonbury. The churchyard at Bradley, in Staffordshire, is said to be still enclosed by the parishioners associated in this manner,--that is, each person is bound to finish a certain portion of paling. The tenants also made or maintained the lord's sheepfold. Each hyde at Thorpe in Essex had to make a certain number of rods for the fold out of the lord's wood.

At times, the tenants had to spread composts in the lord's field. They also collected stubble out of the corn-fields, and reeds out of the marsh; reeds and straw were strewn in apartments, and used for thatching or fuel. In many places they were required to gather nuts in the woods for the lord; the nuts were for making oil, and a quarter of nuts answered to a gallon of oil. Nutting was rather a pastime, or holiday task, than a service. The nutting expeditions at Wickham, in Essex, were to be made on three feast days, which are not named, but Holyrood Day, the 14th of September, may have been one of them:

"This day, they say, is called Holy-Rood Day,
And all the youth are now a nutting gone."

_Grim, the Collier of Croydon._

To make malt for the lord was usually the chief service of the poorer tenants in the immediate neighbourhood of a monastery, as at Darent and other places near Rochester, and at Battle; tenants at a distance, instead of making malt, in some places paid a tax called _malt-silver_. The cottagers carried their lord's malt to the flour mill to be crushed, for they were not allowed to keep hand-mills or mortars, which might be used in grinding corn. The malt might be dried at home, for kilns were common in old houses; but in some manors the lord had a public kiln, which the tenants were bound to make use of.

OLDEN HARVEST.

A _bedrip_, _reaping boon_, or _autumnal precation_, was a more pompous festival than an _arable precation_. In old times, as in our own, the Harvest was made a season of merriment, if not of thanksgiving:

"In tyme of harvest mery it is ynough;
The hayward bloweth mery his horn,
In eueryche felde ripe is corn."

_Romance of King Alexander._

In the illustrations of an old Saxon Calendar, in the Cotton Library, the hayward is shown standing on a hillock, cheering the reapers with his horn. Slumbering reapers were roused by the sound of a horn in Tusser's time; and the custom of blowing horns at harvest-time endured until the end of the last century, for it is noticed by John Scott, of Amwell. In the thirteenth century, when the rentals were mostly compiled, the lord was aided in harvest, as in seed-time, by tenants of all ranks. A superior tenant rarely sent more than two men to the bedrip, or two men and an _overman_, that is a foreman.

The kindly services rendered to the lord in seed-time and harvest were otherwise called precations, gifel-works, and love-boons. The days on which they were rendered used to be called boon-days, and occasionally love-days: a love-day more commonly meant a law-day, a day set apart for a leet or manorial court, a day of final concord and reconciliation; as we read in the _Coventry Mysteries_:

"Now is the love-day mad of us foure fynially
Now may we leve in pes as we were wonte."

Love-boons are described by the Law authorities as "the voluntary labour of the inhabitants of the neighbouring townships."

The memorable truce between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in 1458, was called a love-day.

A customary tenant, in some places, was bound to appear on the grandest day with his whole family, except the housewife, who stayed at home and spun; sometimes excepting the nurse as well the mistress. In the neighbourhood of Oxford, in the year 1279, all the men who held yard-lands, and all who held half-yard-lands, came to two autumnal precations, each of them with one man; and to the third precation each of them with his whole family, excepting his wife and shepherd, and was regaled by the lord on this third day,--not on the two former days; and all the customary tenants were obliged to ride beyond the lord's crops, to see that they were reaped safe and well. They rode in saddles, with bridles and spurs; if they failed in any part of this equipment, they were fined. These mounted overseers were called reap-reeves. In the time of Edward the Third, the tenant of an estate called Fawkner Field was bound to ride among the reapers in the lord's demesnes, at Isleworth, on the bederepe day, in autumn, with a sparrow-hawk upon his wrist. The officers of the court were entitled to a share of the crop. In some places, the sicklemen received a worksheaf each; each man was expected to reap half an acre, called a deywine (day-win), or day's labour. In the accounts of the tenures at Booking, in Essex, there is a curious estimate of the cost of these autumnal precations. The expense of the food provided for the reapers is weighed against the value of their work, and the balance is found to be fivepence and three-farthings.

A yard-lander at Chalgrave, in Oxfordshire, reaped at the two precations in autumn with all his household but his wife and shepherd; if he brought three labourers, he walked with his rod, or rode, in front of the reapers; if he brought no labourers, he worked in person; for two repasts, at nones, a wheaten loaf, pottage, meat, and salt; at supper, bread and cheese and beer, and enough of it, with a candle while the guests were inclined to sit. The last day was always the grand day, when, at Piddington, the tenants and their wives came with napkins, dishes, platters, cups, and other necessary things.

In the reign of Henry III., the ploughmen and other officers, at East Monkton, near Warminster and Shaftesbury, were allowed a ram for a feast on the Eve of St. John the Baptist, when they used to _carry fire round the lord's corn_. This form of the Beltane superstition was observed in the north of England, and in Scotland, about fifty years ago. The Beltane flourishes at the uttermost ends of Europe, in the Scilly Islands, and in Russia; and even the main of Madagascar, who holds his head to other stars, is accustomed to kindle bonfires on the day which we have dedicated to St. John. We learn from the _Popular Antiquities_ that in our time, in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, on the eve of Twelfth Day, fires used to be lit at the ends of the lands, in fields just sown with wheat.

Tenants in old times were required to cut and clear the lord's hay-field. A tenant at Bradbury, for one day's mowing, received a meal of bread and cheese twice in the course of the day; and for carrying the same meadow, a bundle of hay, for his pains. The mowers also received among them twelvepence or a sheep, which they were to choose out of the lord's fold by sight, not by touch. In other places the mower was allowed as much grass as he could raise up on his scythe, without breaking its handle; and a haymaker received as much hay as he could grasp with both arms. At Sturminster, a tenant, after mowing and carrying, received a knitch of hay,--that is, as much hay as the hayward could raise with one finger to the height of his knees.

In the year 1308, it was the rule at Borley that the mowers and haymakers should have two bushels of wheat for bread, a wether worth eighteenpence, a gallon of butter, the second-best cheese out of the lord's dairy, salt and oatmeal for their pottage, and the morning's milk of all the cows; and a mower as much grass as he could lift upon the point of his scythe. In 1222 they had in common a cheese and a good ram. A sheep was commonly the reward of work in the hay-field. Old English husbandmen were very fond of mutton, and the hay-harvest fell about St. John's Day, when mutton was considered in season.

HOCK-DAY.

The second Tuesday after Easter, was another very important day in bygone times. At Chingford, the ward-staff was presented in court on Hock-day. John Ross, of Warwick, records that, on the death of Hardicanute, England was delivered from Danish servitude; and to commemorate this deliverance, on the day commonly called Hock Tuesday, the people of the villages are accustomed to pull in parties at each end of a rope, and to indulge in other jokes. The Hock-tide sports were kept up at Hexton, in Hertfordshire, in the time of Elizabeth, and are described in Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire. Hock-day was usually set apart for a love-day, law-day, or court-leet. This court could be held but twice in the year, and was generally held at Hock-tide and Michaelmas, or Martinmas, since a court on these days would not interfere much with agricultural operations. Leets, like most other gatherings, ended with good cheer. In the thirteenth century, when the officers of East Monkton attended the Hundred courts at Deverell--which were held at Hock-tide and Martinmas--they were allowed a loaf and a piece of meat each. A feast following a court-leet or law-day, was called a leet-ale, or scot-ale, as ale is said to mean no more than a feast. There were leet-ales and scot-ales, church-ales, clerk-ales, bid-ales, and bride-ales. Scot-ales were often abused, and made means of extortion. The bishops, the judges, and all the king's men in vain tried to suppress them. All persons present at a scot-ale paid _scot_,--that is, a fine, or fee; the money raised nominally furnished a feast, but was really for the benefit of the chief officer of the court--the portreeve, head borough, or third borough. In some places, leet-ale was not entirely supported by subscription. In Tollard, on the edge of Cranborne Chase, the steward was allowed on the law-day to have a course at a deer out of Tollard Park. At Bovey Tracy, the profits of the Portreeve's Park defrayed the expenses of the annual revel. The Glastonbury Rental describes the mode of keeping the scot-ales in Wiltshire, in the thirteenth century. The customs are very like those of ancient Guilds. By the rules of the Guild of the Holy Ghost at Abingdon, members who sat down at dinner paid one rate, and members who stood for want of room paid another.

SHEEP-SHEARING.

This was another service imposed upon the tenantry. Though hard and heavy work to wash and shear sheep, in the thirteenth century it was done by women, who are called "shepsters" in the _Vision_ of Piers Plowman. The sheep were washed in the mill-pond. Shearers were usually entitled to the wambelocks, or loose locks of wool under the belly of the sheep; or at Weston, in Oxfordshire, a penny instead of the locks. The finest part of the fleece is the wool about the sheep's throat, called in Scotland the haslock, or hawselocks:

"A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo',
Scarlet and green he sets, the borders blew."

_The Gentle Shepherd._

Up in the North they call a sheep-shearing the clipping-time; and to come in clipping-time is to come as opportunely as at sheep-shearing, when there are always mirth and good cheer. In the middle of the seventeenth century, clippers always expected a joint of roasted mutton. In the _Winter's Tale_, the clown ponders:

"Let me see, what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three
pounds of sugar, five pounds of currants, rice--what will this
sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress
of the feast, and she lays it on.... I must have saffron to colour
the warden pies; mace; dates, none! That's out of my note.
Nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger--but that I may beg; four
pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun."

The old customs of clipping-time were observed by Sir Moyle Finch, at Walton, near Wetherby, in the time of Charles I., and are thus described by Henry Best:

"Hee hath usually fower severall keepinges shorne altogether in
the Hall-garth.... He hath had 49 clippers all at once, and their
wage is, to each man 12_d_. a day, and when they have done, beere
and bread and cheese; the traylers have 6_d_. a day. His tenants
the graingers are tyed to come themselves, and winde the well;
they have a fatte wether and a fatte lambe killed, and a dinner
provided for their paines; there will be usually three score or
fower score poore folkes gatheringe up the lockes; to oversee whom
standeth the steward and two or three of his friends or servants,
with each of them a rodde in his hande; there are two to carry
away the well, and weigh the roll so soone as it is wounde up, and
another that setteth it downe ever as it is weighed; there is
6_d_. allowed to a piper for playing to the clippers all the day;
the shepheards have each of them his bell-weather's fleece,"--the
"bellys" allowed to the shepherd by the old Saxon laws.

Sheep-shearing was thus celebrated in ancient times with feasting and rustic pastimes; at present, excepting a supper at the conclusion of the sheep-shearing, we have few remains of the older custom. Nevertheless, it is interesting to revert to these pictures of pastoral life and rusticity, more especially as we find them embellished by the charms of poetry, and enlivened by a simplicity of manners which, to whatever period it may belong, is always entertaining, if not productive of better fruit. The season of the shearing is thus laid down by Dyer:

"If verdant Elder spreads
Her silver flowers, if humble Daisies yield
To yellow rowfoot and luxuriant grass,
Gay Shearing Time approaches."

CONVEYANCE SERVICE.

The most irksome tasks were the transport services, called in Scotland the duties of _arriage_ and _carriage_. The load of a sumpter-horse was usually eight bushels--the weight of a sack of wool, or a quarter of corn. A wain-load was apparently nine seams. The goods carried were chiefly provisions--grain, pulse, malt, honey, bacon, suet, salt, and wood. A castle or monastery was _farmed_--that is, supplied with food--by the nearest manors belonging to the lord. The farming was done according to a regular cycle, each manor sending supplies in its turn for so many days or weeks. We have a list of thirty-five villages which took turns to farm Ely Minster--some for three or four days, some for a week, some for a fortnight.

Everything contributed in this manner did not travel in waggons, or packs and panniers; oxen and swine were driven to the head of the barony to be slaughtered, especially at Martinmas; if the drovers came from any distance, they received drove-meat. Arriage and carriage were not very burdensome when fulfilled by the removal of so much wool, or cheese, or corn, or bacon, to a neighbouring town; but they became serious when a tenant had to ride or drive from the heart of England to the coast and home again. Some tenants were called _pouchers_, because they were required to carry goods in a poke, pouch, or bag. In the Channel Islands, on the first spring-tide after the 24th of June, the poor who possess neither cart nor horse have the exclusive right to cut _vraic_ (wrack, sea-weed), on consideration that it is conveyed on their backs to the beach. Thus cut and conveyed it is called _vraic à la poche_, and distinguished from _vraic à cheval_.

When fish was wanted at Rochester, the tenants of the four hydes of Hedenham and Cuddington, near Aylesbury, were called out; two of the hydes brought the fish from Gloucester into Buckinghamshire, and the other two hydes carried it on to Rochester: it is likely that they were sent to fetch the dainty lamprey, still sought for at Gloucester. The _langerodes_, or long journeys, were very troublesome to the tenants, but could not be dispensed with while there were no regular mails, and no public conveyances. A person undertaking a _langerode_ either received some remuneration or worked out his rent by serving as a carrier; in general he was not inclined to leave his home and farm, and found it more convenient to pay the price of the service, which enabled the lord to find another carrier. No services were more frequently commuted than the duties of arriage and carriage, and a body of professional carriers was gradually formed by the habit of constant commutation.

WATCH AND WARD.--THE BEADLE.

The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably, maintained on the north side of London until the institution of a general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four men in each rural township, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord to the Feast of St. Nicholas. The watchmen could detain any one unknown to them; any one who would not stand and declare himself, was pursued with hue and cry--with horn and voice--

"Swarming at his back the country cried."

We suppose that St. Nicholas became the patron of highwaymen, because the watch was intermitted on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas. The wardmen were occasionally noticed in the Domesday of St. Paul's. The survey of 1279 states, that at Sutton, in Middlesex, each tenant who had cattle on the lord's lands to the value of thirty pence, paid a penny at Martinmas, called _ward-penny_; but this tax was not due from the watchmen of the ward, who waited at night in the King's highway, and received the ward-staff:--

"They wared and they waked,
And the Ward so kept,
That the king was harmless,
And the country scatheless."

In Essex, the ward-keeper had a rope with a bell, or more than one bell, attached to it: the rope may have been used to stop the way. The ward-staff was a type of authority, cut and carried with peculiar ceremony, and treated with great reverence.

The duties of the beadle (Saxon, _bydel_ or _bædel_), in ancient times, lay more on the farm than in the law-court, the state procession, or in the parochial duties of punishing petty offenders, as in the present day.[58] In many places, the bedelry and the haywardship were held together by one person. The beadle was the verger of the manorial court; he likewise overlooked the reapers and carried his rod into the harvest-field. At Darent, near Rochester, the beadle held five acres as beadle, shepherd, and hayward; he had eighteen sheep and two cows in the lord's pasture; against Christmas he had a _crone_--an old sheep--a lamb with a fleece, and some other allowances. At Ickham, in the same county, the beadle's office was hereditary: the beadle had five acres with a cottage for his service, and made all the citations of the court, and, if he went on horseback into the Weald of Kent, he was allowed provender for his horse; he had pasture for five hogs, five head of cattle, and a horse; he attended in the fields to regulate the labours of the harvest. And such had been the tenure of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

Old English gentlemen were anciently very much afraid of theft and peculation; they believed that "Treste lokes maketh trewe hewen,"--or, to change their maxim into current English, they believed that "firm locks made faithful servants." The barns were to be well closed after August, and no servant was to open them until threshing-time, without the special direction of the landlord or the steward. The strictest accounts were kept. Every person, in any situation of the slightest trust or responsibility, was required to render an account of every penny and every article passing through his hands, to the receiver, or bailiff, whose accounts were revised once a year by auditors, who went round from manor to manor.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] The staple of this paper is selected and condensed from a series of learned articles, entitled "The Rights, Disabilities, and Usages of the Ancient English Peasantry;" in the _Law Magazine and Law Review_, published by Messrs. Butterworth. Some of the ancient law terms have been omitted, in order to better adapt this abstract for popular reading.

[58] In our day, the beadle is most familiar to us as an officer of the church. Formerly, one of his duties was a strange one. We read of the beadle, in a church, going round the edifice during service, carrying a long staff, at one end of which was a fox's brush, and at the other a knob: with the former, he gently tickled the faces of the female sleepers, while on the heads of their male compeers he bestowed with the knob a terrible rap.

At Acton church, in Cheshire, some five and twenty years ago, one of the churchwardens, or the apparitor, used to go round the church during service, with a long wand in his hand; and if any of the congregation were asleep, they were instantly awoke by a tap on the head.

In the church at Dunchurch, a similar custom existed: a person, having a stout wand, shaped like a hay-fork at the end, stept stealthily up and down the naves and aisles, and whenever he saw an individual asleep, he touched him so effectually, that the spell was broken; this being sometimes done by fitting the fork to the nape of the neck.

OLDEN HOUSE-MARKS.

The means by which property has been identified, and denoted by some distinctive mark, at various periods, present us with some curious customs.

In England, individual marks were in use from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, probably much earlier; and when a yeoman affixed his mark to a deed, he drew a _signum_, well known to his neighbours, by which his land, his cattle, and sheep, his agricultural implements, and even his ducks, were identified. In the 25th year of Queen Elizabeth, a jury at Seaford, in Sussex, convicted John Comber "for markyng of three ducks of Edwd Warwickes and two ducks of Symon Brighte with his own marke, and cutting owt theire markes." Cows and oxen were marked on the near horn. When cattle in bodies of many hundreds ranged over extensive commons, as was formerly the case, the use of marks for identification was more indispensable than at present. Our swans retain their marks to the present day. In Ditmarsh and Denmark the owner's mark was cut in stone over the principal door of the house; it designated not only his land and cattle, but his stall in the church, and his grave when he was no more. At Witney, Oxon, a woolstapler's mark may be seen so incised on a house, with the date 1564; and numerous merchants' marks are at Norwich and Yarmouth. At Holstein, within the memory of man, the beams of the cottages of the bond-servants were incised with the marks of their masters. A pastor, writing from Angeln, says, "The hides had their marks, which served instead of the names of their owners." In the island of Föhr, a little to the north of Ditmarsh, the mark, cut on a wooden ticket, is always sold with the house; and it is cut in stone over the door; and the same custom is still in use in Schleswig and Holstein. In the Tyrolese Alps, at the present day, the cattle that are driven out to pasturage are marked on the horn with the mark of their owner's land. Marks for cattle are also used in Switzerland, in the Bavarian Alps, and in some parts of Austria.

These house-marks are connected with merchants' and tradesmen's marks, and also with stonemasons' marks, all of which formed a lower kind of heraldry for those not entitled to the bearings of the noble; for, on old houses at Erfurt, double shields, with the marks of the families of husband and wife, are found.