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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
IN THE MIDDLE AGES

ENGLISH KNIGHTS TRAVELLING, AUGUST, 1399-
{From the MS. Harleian, 1319, painted circa a.d. 1400.)

ENGLISH
WAYFARING LIFE
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
(XIV"' CENTURY)

J. J. JUSSERAND
Translated krom the French by
LUCY TOULMIN SMITH

A new Edition revised and enlarged by the Author

NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

First Edition . . .

1889

Second Impression .

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Third Impression .
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Fourth Impresssion .
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Fifth Impression
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Sixth Impression . .
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Seventh Impression .
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Eighth Impression .
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Ninth Impression. .
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Second Edition {Tenth Ir
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)
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PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
We know Egypt, thanks to her tombs, and we know Rome,
thanks to Pompeii, in these modern days, better than we know
the Middle Ages of Europe and the life of an ordinary man
during that period. We cannot hope to find in any corner of
France or England a Pompeii, catacombs, or pyramids. In
our countries the human torrent has never ceased flowing ;
rapid and tumultuous in its course, it has at no time ensured
the preservation of the past by deposits of quiet ooze.
Tet, this common life of our ancestors, is it indiscernible,
impossible to reconstruct ? is that of kings and princes alone
accessible to our view through the remoteness of ages, like those
huge monuments which men see from afar when they cannot
distinguish the houses in a distant city ? Surely not. But to
reach the heart of the nation, to get into touch with the greater
number, a patient and extended inquiry is necessary. To make
this usefully, one must break more or less completely with the
old habit of taking the ideas of every-day^ life in the Middle
Ages only from the descriptions, the satires, or the eulogies of
poets. Literature is no doubt of valuable help in these restora
tions, but it is not the only, nor even the principal source of
information. Poets embellish, imagine, colour, or transform ;
we must not accept their statements without checking them.
To check them is what we can do. We may have no such

8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
burial grounds to explore as in Egypt, nor a whole town to bring to
light as at Pompeii, but we have what is worth almost as much :
the incomparable depositories of the Records of old England.
Immense strides have been made, especially within the last
hundred years, to render their contents public. Thousands
of documents have been printed or analysed, and the work is
still continuing ; indeed, looking at the progress made of late,
a feeling of wonder cannot be repressed at the premature alarm
of historians like Robertson, who wrote in 1769 ; " The
universal progress of science during the two last centuries,
the art of printing, and other obvious causes, have filled Europe
with such a multiplicity of histories, and with such a vast
collection of historical materials, that the term of human life
is too short for the study or even the perusal of them." The
field of research has never ceased to widen, while the boundaries
of human life scarcely recede at all ; but students comprehend
that the best means of rendering service is to impose limits on
themselves and to study by preference separate points or periods
of the immense problem to the best of their power. The work
of unearthing is so far advanced that it is possible usefully to
sift the riches drawn from these new catacombs.
At first sight all these petitions, these year-books full of
reports of lawsuits, these long rows of statutes and ordinances
seem the coldest things in the world, the most devoid of life.
They are not even mummies or skeletons, they look as if they
were but the dust of old bones. Tet to judge of them thus
were to judge in a superficial manner ; no doubt it might
seem pleasanter to keep to the descriptions of tale-tellers ; but
how many chances of error do they not present ! With the
year-books, and the petitions followed by inquiries, we are
on distinctly more solid ground ; we soon grow accustomed to
their language, and, under the apparently cold dust, sparks
of life appear, we can then with little effort restore scenes, under
stand existences, perceive the distant echo of imprecations or
shouts of triumph.
It was with this thought that the present work was under-

PREFACE 9
taken a good many years ago. In it there is a little less
mention of Chaucer and a little more of the " Rolls of Par
liament " than is sometimes found in the works devoted to
the same period ; this does not arise from want of admira
tion for the great man, far from it, but from the need of a
test and of means of control, which may perhaps be deemed
legitimate, and only increase, in the end, our sentiment for
him. The present writer has desired to confine himself in
this work within strict limits ; one only of the many sides of
the common life in the fourteenth century is here studied, a
side little enough known and sometimes difficult to observe,
namely, the character and the quality of the chief kinds of
nomadic existence then carried on in England. And even in
that reduced compass he is very far from making claim to
completeness ; so that this work is presented to the public
more as a sketch than a treatise.
In the remodelling of his text, which had appeared as
a French book in 1884 and as articles in English some years
earlier, the author has been assisted, he need hardly say, by
his learned translator, to whom he owes much for having
assumed the task of turning into English a work which she
herself would have been so well qualified to write. He has
been helped too by friends, all of whom he does not mean to
name here. But though feeling that in this also his incomplete
ness will be very apparent, he cannot deprive himself of the
pleasure of inscribing on this page with gratitude and affection
the names of Gaston Paris, of the Institute of France ; of
E. Maunde Thompson, Principal Librarian of the British
Museum ; of F. J. FurnivaU, Director of the Chaucer and many
other Societies ; lastly, he ought, perhaps, Jo have said firstly,
of the poet and critic, Edmund Gosse, to whose kind initiative
and suggestion he owes it that his book is published under its
present form. j.
Albert Gate,
July ']th, 1889.

10 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
At the time of " les longs espoirs et les vastes pensees"
so far back that I have but a hazy recollection of him, the young
author of these pages had formed so bold a plan that he kept
it to himself, which was to write, if a long life were granted
him, a complete description of the English people, during
it is true a single century, the fourteenth, that period,
of unique interest, when, after long years of probation, it
became certain that England would be English and nothing
else, when the language was formed, the first masterpieces
were written, the chief traits of the national character
became permanent, the principal institutions were founded,
and even a first attempt at Reformation was launched.
Old Barthelemy Saint Hilaire, the indefatigable trans
lator of Aristotle, used to say to me when he was our
Foreign Minister : one must select, early in life, a vast
intellectual task, that will be like a literary companion, a
long-lived one, which you can never lose, because it is sure
to outlive you. The author of this study thought the ampler
work would be his literary companion.
But his official duties thereupon became more exacting,
and as they had a first claim, he had to part with his companion,
whom, as will happen in life s pilgrimage, others replaced
at later stages of the journey. He desired, however, that
some trace be left of an early comradeship : hence the present
essay, illustrated in part from his pen-and-ink sketches, also
a token of comradeship.
The need of this new issue has supplied the occasion for
a revision of the text, with numerous corrections and addi
tions, written in a land unsuspected by the best-travelled
of the ever-moving heroes of these pages, written too at a time
when the Hundred years war of Chaucerian days has been
replaced by a Hundred years peace, and when great deeds
performed in common are, if we and our successors prove in
any way worthy of our dead, the harbingers of a friendship
not to be broken between France, England and America.
Washington, 1920.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface  y
Table of Contents  ii
List of Illustrations  ij
Introduction  23
PART I
ENGLISH ROADS
CHAP. 1. ROADS AND BRIDGES  29
II. THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER AND THE CASUAL PASSER-BY . . . 90
III. SECURITY OF THE ROADS  I49
PART II
LAT WAYFARERS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE  181
I. HERBALISTS, CHARLATANS, MINSTRELS, JUGGLERS, AND TUMBLERS . 1 83
II. MESSENGERS, ITINERANT MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS . . . .2 23
III. OUTLAWS, WANDERING WORKMEN, AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND . 254

PART III
RELIGIOUS WAYFARERS
I. WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS  283
II. THE PARDONERS  3^2

338
346

12 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
CHAP.III. PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES
I. Pilgrimages, their motives : to fulfil a vow, to spite the king, to
regain health  • * * *
2. Principal English pilgrimages ; the one of European celebrity,
St. Thomas of Canterbury  * *
•!. Piety, merriment, abuses. Real and false relics. Signs and brooches.
Pilgrim stories. Honest and false pilgrims  J5/
4. Pilgrimages beyond sea, Calais, Boulogne, Chartres, Rocamadour,
St. James of Compostela, Cologne, Rome. Offerings left and
indulgences gained. Helping gilds. Faith, superstition, and
scepticism. Pilgrimages by proxy ... • • 37'-'
5. The holy journey to Jerusalem. Pilgrims in the days of St. Jerome.
Pilgrims in arms, the crusades. Itineraries and Journals.
"Mandeville," William Wey, the lord of Anglure . . 395

Conclusion  4^9
Appendix  4^3
1. Patent of King John entrusting a French cleric with the completion
of London Bridge, 1201 ...  4^5
II. Petition concerning an old bridge, with arches too low and too narrow
to allow boats to pass, 1442 . . • ^20
111. London Bridge and its maintenance . . . 4^7
IV. Inquests as to the maintenance of bridges, temp. Ed. I and Ed. II . 4^9
V. The King's journeys. Petitions and statutes concerning the Royal
Purveyors  . . 43^
VI. The recurrence of leet-days and visits of Justices ... 43 ^
VII, The dress of the worldly monk . . ... 43 ^
VIII. Noblemen's exactions when travelling  43 3
IX. Passage of the Humber in a ferry -- . . . . . 433
X. The right of sanctuary . ... .... 434
XI. A monopoly of minstrelsy for the King's own minstrels . . -435
XII. Popular English songs of the Middle Ages  437
XIII. Indulgences and the theory of the "Treasury" according to Pope
Clement VI  438
XIV. Sermon accompanying the display of a pretended papal bull (on the
occasion of the coming of Henry of Lancaster) .... 439
XV. Ecclesiastical documents concerning chiefly English pardoners . . ^40
XVI. The first recorded crucifix in England sculptured from life . . . 445
XVII. The pilgrimage of Reynard . . ... . . 446
Index  ^^g

ILLUSTRATIONS

PACE

I. Knights travelling, followed by their escort of archers. From
the MS. Harleian 13 19, in the British Museum, fol. 25, painted
circa 1400 (below No. 15). The two travellers are the Duke
of Exeter and the Duke of Surrey ; they go to meet Henry of
Lancaster at Chester, to whom they are sent by King Richard II,
August 1399. Frontispiece 4
2. A minstrel dancing and singing. From the MS. 2 B. vii., in
the British Museum, fol. l()Ta. English, early fourteenth
century  7
3. The three-branched bridge at Crowland, fourteenth century,
present state  21
4. Old London Bridge. From an illumination in the MS. 16 F. ii.
fol. 73, in the British Museum, containing the poems of Charles
d'Orleans (fifteenth century). This is the oldest representation
extant of the famous bridge built by Isembert and his peers.
The painting, of which the upper part only is here given, repre
sents the Tower of London with Charles d'Orleans sitting in
it as a prisoner. In our reproduction may be seen the chapel
of St. Thomas Becket and the houses on the bridge, the wharves
along the City side of the water, and the tops of the white turrets
of the Tower of London. The view was obviously painted
from nature. A complete reproduction serves as a frontis
piece for Vol. I of my " Literary History."  29
5. The old bridge on the Rhone at Avignon, built by the friars
pontiff in the twelfth century, as it now stands, the four arches
and the chapel  33
6. The old bridge at Cahors, thirteenth century, present state,
photographed by Prof. Enlart, director of the Trocadero
Museum  "¦.... . 37
7. The bridge at Stratford-at-Bow, as it stood before its recon
struction in 1839. From an engraving dated 1 8 14 . . 41
8. A part of London Bridge ; None-such House, the drawbridge,
and the houses on the bridge, as they appeared in 1600. From
a drawing in Pepys Library, Magd. Coll., Cambridge, repro
duced by Dr. FurnivaU in his edition of Harrison's " Description
of England," 1877  41;
13

14 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
PAGE
9. The taking down of the houses on old London Bridge, from a
water-colour by C. Pyne (1800-18 84), preserved in the Vic
toria and Albert Museum  5'
10. Hugh of Clopton's bridge at Stratford-on-Avon, fifteenth cen
tury  55
II. The chapel on the bridge at Wakefield, fourteenth century.
From a copyright photograph by G. and J. Hall, of Wakefield 67
12. The bridge with a defensive tower at Warkworth, Northumber
land, fourteenth century. From a photograph by G. W.
Wilson, of Aberdeen  7'
13. The defensive tower on the Monnow Bridge at Monmouth,
from a photograph obligingly supplied by Mr. Oliver Baker 75
14. The one-arched bridge on the Esk, near Danby Castle, York
shire, built during the fourteenth century by Neville, Lord
Latimer, the arms of whom are still to be seen at the top of
the bridge. From a photograph obtained through the kind
ness of the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, of Danby Parsonage, York . 77
15. The parliament sitting in Westminster. From the MS.
Harl. 13 19, in the British Museum, fol. 57, painted circa
1400. This MS. contains a chronicle of the last years of
Richard II, written in his native tongue by a French gentle
man called Creton, who accompanied the king in his last
journey to Ireland. It is invaluable both for its text and its
pictures ; in both the author seems to have been very careful
to adhere to facts. He begins writing in verse, but afterwards
takes to prose, stating that he is coming now to events of such
importance that he prefers using prose, to make sure that he
shall not allow himself to be led by fancy.
He must have himself superintended the painting with the
greatest care. There can be no doubt that the figures are
actual portraits ; of this there are two proofs : first, when the
same person appears in several paintings he is always given the
same features, and can be easily recognized ; second, the exact
resemblance of one of the persons can be put beyond a doubt,
which makes it likely that the others also resemble their originals.
Richard II, the image of whom constantly recurs in the pictures,
is easily recognizable as having the same features as in the bronze
statue over his tomb at Westminster. And we know for certain
that this tomb and statue were ordered by Richard himself
during his lifetime ; the indenture with the seals attached,
dated 18 Rich. II (1395), and binding two apparently English
artists, viz., " Nicholas Broker et Godfrey Prest, citeins et
copersmythes de Loundres," is still in existence at the Record
Office. The sitting of the parliament here represented is the famous
one when Richard was deposed, and Henry of Lancaster came

ILLUSTRATIONS 15
PAGE
forth to " chalenge yis Rewme of Yngland " (" Rolls of Parlia
ment," iii. p. 422), Oct. 1399, and the throne was then, as
seen in the painting, left unoccupied, " sede regali cum pannis
auri solempniter preparata, tunc vacua," " Rolls," ibid. On
the right of the throne are seated the spiritual lords ; on the
left the temporal lords, knights, &c. The nearest to the throne
on the left is Henry of Lancaster (wearing a tall fur cap). Says
Creton : " Entour le dit siege asez pres
Estoient les prelas assis . . .
D'autre coste tous les seigneurs,
Grans moyens petiz et meneurs (lesser ones) . . .
Premiers seoit le due Henry
Et puis tout au plus pres de ly
Le due DIorc (York) son beau cousin," Sec. , 87
16. A common cart. From the MS. 10 E. IV., in the British
Museum, fol. no i, early fourteenth century, English . . 90
17. A reaper's cart going up-hill. From the Louterell psalter;
fac-simile of the engraving in the " Vetusta Monumenta,"
Society of Antiquaries, vol. vi. ; see in that vol., " Remarks
on the Louterell psalter," by J. G. Rokewood — " Dominus
Galfridus Louterell me fieri fecit." English, first half of
the fourteenth century  93
18. Ladies travelling in their carriage with their dogs and pet
animals, one of which is a squirrel. One of the followers
travelling on horseback, to be more at his ease and to be able
to defy the wind, has covered his head with his hood, and carries
his tall hat hanging to his girdle. From the Louterell psalter.
See preceeding No.  97
19. A young squire travelling :
" And he hadde ben somtyme in chivachie,
In Flaundres, in Artoys, and in Picardie,
And born him wel, as of so I litel space.
In hope to stonden in his lady grace.
Embrowdid was he, as it were a mede
Al ful of fressh floures, white and reede,
Syngynge he was, or flowtynge al the day j
He was as fressh as is the moneth of May."
From the EUesmere MS. of the " Canterbury Tales." The
EUesmere cuts are used by the kind permission of Dr. FurnivaU 1 00
20. TraveUing in a horse-litter ; a lady and a wounded knight are
carried in the Utter ; squires escort them. From the MS. 118
Frangais, fol. 285, in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris;
" Romance of Lancelot," late fourteenth century, French. A
good example of a State horse-litter is to be found in the MS.
18 E. II, in the British Museum, fol. 7; "Chronicles of
Froissart," French, fifteenth century  10 1

i6 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

PAGE

21-22. Ladies on horseback. Two drawings lUustrative of both
ways of riding; sitting sideways: Chaucer's pnoresse, and
riding astride : Chaucer's Wife of Bath. From the EUesmere
MS.  ^°5
23. A family dinner. From the MS. Addit. 28162, in the British
Museum, fol. 10 b, early fourteenth century; French. Note
the carver, the cup-bearer, the musicians, the marshal of the
haU, whose mission it is to expel objectionable mtruders,
whether men or dogs. In the present case, while this ofiicer
is expelling a very objectionable lazar, come under pretence of
sprinkling the diners with holy water, a little further a dog
seizes his opportunity, and gets hold of a fish on the table. The
carver grasps the m.eat with his left hand ; forks then were
unknown, but good breeding was, nevertheless, not neglected,
and it consisted in the server's touching the meat only with
the left hand. Writing later than the time we speak of, John
Russell, marshal of the haU to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester
(fifteenth century), adds one refinement more, that is to use only
three fingers of the left hand. This was, in his mind, the acme
of fine breeding :
" Sett never on fysche nor flesche, nor fowle trewly,
Moore than ij fyngurs and a thombe, for that is curtesie.
Touche never with youre right hande no maner mete surely."
"Boke of Nurture" (FurnivaU, 1868, p. 137).
It may be seen from our picture that part of these niceties
was unknown yet to carvers in the first half of the fourteenth
century. The whole of the left hand is used to grasp the meat 109

24.

** A cooke thei hadde . . .
To boyle chiknes and the mary bones.'

From the iUumination in the EUesmere MS. of the " Canterbury
Tales." The pot-hooks with three prongs, which he carries,
were the distinctive attribute of cooks and cookmaids, and appear
on all representations of such people : several are to be found
in the Louterell psalter ; see " Vetusta Monumenta," vol. vi.,
the Roy. MS. 10 E. IV., passim, &c. They used it to turn
the meat and take it out of the deep round-bellied pots, standing
on three legs over the fire, which were then in common use. 116
25. The new habits of luxury ; a gentleman, helped by two attend
ants, dressing before the fire in his bedroom. From the MS.
2 B. vii., in the British Museum, fol. 72 ^, English, early
fourteenth century  127
Of this luxury, of the spread of the use of chimneys, &c.,
Langland, as a satirist, complains ; and this, as a marshal of the
hall, John Russell a little later recommends as the proper method

ILLUSTRATIONS 17
PAGE
of dressing for a gentleman. He then thus addresses the
attendant :
" Than knele down on youre kne, and thus to youre soverayn ye say :
' Syr, what robe or govn pleseth it yow to were today ? ' " &c.
"Boke of Nurture" (FurnivaU, i868, p. 178).
26. An English inn of the fourteenth century. From the Louterell
psalter  129
27. The New Inn, Gloucester, originally built for pilgrims, middle
of the fifteenth century, stiU in use,  131
28. On the roadside; the alehouse. From the MS. 10 E. IV., in
the British Museum, fol. 114 i; English, fourteenth century. 133
29. The hermitage chapel of St. Robert, hewn out of the limestone,
at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, thirteenth century; the figure of
the knight, of a much later date. Similar rock habitations are
innumerable in France in the valley of the Loire and of certain
of its affluents, especially in Vendomois (at Troo for example) ;
some are still occupied ; several were, in the middle ages, the
place of abode of hermits and still bear signs thereof . . . 139
30. A Hermit in his solitude, tempted by the devil; MS. 10 E.
IV., fol. 1131^. The miniature reproduced is one out of several
which illustrate a well-known mediseval tale. Here it may
be remarked that though this MS., invaluable as it is for the
study of English customs, dresses, &c., during the fourteenth
century has been often made use of, it has perhaps never been
so thoroughly studied as it deserves. It contains Decretals,
with marginal coloured drawings of the highest value on account
of their variety and the subjects they illustrate. Not only a
number of games and trades are there represented, with miny
miracles of the Virgin, &c., but there are also complete tales
told by the draughtsman, without words, and only with the
help of his colours. He does not invent his stories, but simply
illustrates the fabliaux which he remembered and particularly
relished. The drawing here belongs to the story of the
" hermit who got drunk." As he was once sitting before his
cell he was tempted by the devil, who reproached him with
his continual virtue, and entreated him to |in at least once,
recommending him to choose either to get drunk or to commit
adultery or to commit murder. The hermit chose the first
as being the least (see below, p. 133, the picture where he is
seen at his drink). But when he has once got drunk he finds
on his way the wife of his friend the miller ; he commits adultery
with her, and then meeting the husband, kiUs him. The text of
the tale is in Meon, " Nouveau recueil de fabliaux," 1829,
vol. ii. p. 173, " De Termite qui s'enyvra " .... 144

1 8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

PAGE

31. Escaped prisoner flying to sanctuary. From the MS. 10 E.
IV., fol. 206 b, in the British Museum, fourteenth century 149
32. The Durham knocker (Norman), affixed to one of the doors of the
cathedral. Fugitives used it to be admitted to sanctuary. Cf a
capital in the church at Saint Nectaire, Puy de Dome, Xlth
century, representing, in accordance with Professor Enlart s
interpretation, a man who flies to sanctuary and embraces a
column thereof, while an angel with drawn sword stands by to
protect him  158
33. The stone /nVi or f rid stool in Hexham Abbey, Northumber
land, dating from Saxon times, possibly the episcopal chair of St.
Wilfrid, a great church builder, bishop of Hexham in the early
years of the Vlllth century  160
34. The stone fridstool at Sprotborough, Yorkshire, fourteenth
century, a view kindly procured by my British colleague at
Washington, Lord Grey of Fallodon  161
35. An adventure seeker. From the MS. 2 B. vii., fol. 149,
English, early fourteenth century  181
36. A blind beggar led by his dog. From the MS. 10 E. IV.,
fol. no  182
37. A Physician (Chaucer's Doctour of Phisik) :
*' He knew the cause of every malady."
From the EUesmere MS  183
38. Playing upon the vielle (viol). From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 4 207
39. The " Minstrels' gallery " in the Exeter cathedral, fourteenth
century. From a photograph by Messrs. Frith and Co. . 209
40. A fourteenth-century juggler. From the MS. 10 E. IV.,
fol. 5  216
41. Favourite dances of the fourteenth century; a woman dancing
head downwards, to the sound of a tabor and a double flute.
From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 58. Representations of such
dances of women, head downwards, are innumerable in MSS.,
painted glass, old portals, &c. There is one in the album
of Villard de Honnecourt, thirteenth century, ed. Lassus and
Darcel ; the interest taken in such performances is attested by
countless examples  219
42. Favourite dances in Persia. From a pencil-case in the posses
sion of the author. See also the life-size Persian paintings
exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where similar
dances are represented ...  220
43. A performing bear. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 154, in
the British Museum, EngUsh, fourteenth century . . . 222
44. A sham messenger carrying a letter. From the MS. 10 E.
IV., fol. 53 iJ  223
45. A professional messenger. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 302 b,
in the British Museum, EngUsh, fourteenth century . . 228

ILLUSTRATIONS 19

PAGE

46. A travelling pedlar ; his bag robbed by monkeys. From the
MS. 10 E. IV., in the British Museum, fol. 149 b . . . 238
47. A rich merchant traveUing (Chaucer's Marchaunt) :
*' A marchaunt was ther with a forked herd,
In motteleye, and high on horse he sat,
Uppon his heed a Flaundrisch bever hat . . .
Ther wiste no man that he was in dette
So estately was he of governaunce."
From the EUesmere MS  245
48. Forest life; wood-cutters. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol.
\oo b  254
49. Forest life; a shooting casualty. From the MS. 10 E IV.,
fol. 203 a  258
50. Reaping time. Labourers reaping corn under the supervision
of the hayward. From the MS. 2 B. vii., fol. 78 b. English,
early fourteenth century. " They dwell in fayre houses, and
we haue the payne and traueyle, rayne and wynd in the feldes "
(speech of John Ball, in Lord Berners' Froissart, chap, ccclxxxi).
The overseer showm in the drawing may possibly be a bailiff:
" Supervidere debet ballivus falcatores, messores, cariatores,"
&c. (" Fleta," cap. 73), or a provost, who had about the same
duties, but was practically chosen by the peasants themselves.
But it seems more likely to be a hayward ; the dress and attitude
better suit a man in that station. The care of seeing that " repe-
men . . . repe besili and clenli," was sometimes entrusted to
such officers ; see Skeat, " Notes to Piers the Plowman," Early
English Te.xt Society, 1877, p. 273. A hom, such as our
man bears, was always carried by haywards, who used to
blow it to warn off people from straying in the crops. The
rough and commanding attitude seen in the drawing would not
be so readily expected from a bailiff with his juridical know
ledge and comparatively high function, or from a provost
appointed by the peasants themselves, as from a hayward or
garde ehampetre  267
51. In the stocks. A womm and a monk are put into them ; a
gentleman abuses them. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 187,
where it forms part of a series of drawings illustrating a fabl
of the same sort as the one alluded to above (illustration No. 28).
It is called, Du soueretain et de la fame au chevalier ; the author
is Rutebeuf, and it may be found in the works of this the most
famous of the French thirteenth-century poets (ed. Jubinal, or
ed. Kressner)  272
52. Stocks at Shalford, near Guildford; present state, a drawing
by Aug. de Blignieres  274
53. Beggars. A cripple and other beggars helped by a generous
king to his own garments. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 261 ^ 275

20 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
PAGE
54. A friar (Chaucer's friar). From the EUesmere MS. " And it
shall be lawful for such as shall be compelled by necessity to
be shod, . . . and they are not to ride unless some manifest
necessity or infirmity obUge them." " The rule of the Friars
Minors," Dugdale's "Monasticon," 18 17, vol. vi. part iii.
p. 1504  283
55. " When Adam delved and Eve span "—the text of John BalFs
harangue (same idea in Wace's " Roman de Rou," 1. 6027),
illustrated from the early fourteenth-century MS., 2 B. vii.,
4 b, in the British Museum. (EngUsh)  287
56. A worldly ecclesiastic— -
" Ful wel biloved and familiar was he
. . . with worthie wommen."
(Prologue of the " Canterbury Tales "). From the MS.
10 E. IV., fol. 185. Belongs to the same story as No. 48 . . 292
57. Psalm singing. The interior of a friars' church. From the
MS. Domit. A. xvii., fol. 120^, in the British Museum, early
fifteenth century. The splendour of this church, with its
beautiful pavement, its sculptured stalls, altar, roof, and pin-;-
nacles, very exactly tallies with the contemporary criticisms
against the wealth of the friars, and may be taken as an illustra
tion of the very words of Wyclif and Langland . . . .299
58. Sprinkling people at dinner with holy water. From the MS.
10 E. IV., fol. 108 ^  304
59. A game of fox and geese. From the MS. 10 E. IV., fol. 49 b 312
60. Reading in Canterbury cathedral of a fabricated papal buU
granting pardons to those who will help Henry of Lancaster
against King Richard II. From the MS. Harl. 13 19, fol. 12 <2,
containing the chronicle of Creton ; see supra No. 14. The arch
bishop, Thomas Arundel, the same who led Henry IV to
the empty throne, shown in No. 1 5, is represented saying :
" My good people, hearken all of you here. You well
know how the King most wrongfuUy and without reason
banished your lord Henry ; I have therefore obtained of the
Holy Father who is our patron, that those that shall forthwith
bring aid this day, shall every one of them have remission of
all sins. . . . Behold the sealed bull that the Pope of renowned
Rome hath sent me, my good friends, in behalf of you all."
John Webb's translation of Creton's chronicle, " ArchEEologia,"
vol. XX. 
61. A pardoner (Chaucer's pardoner) —
"A vernicle hadde he sowed on his cappe.
His vvalet lay byforn him in his lappe
Bret-ful of pardoun come from Rome al hoot."
From the EUesnjere MS. of the " Canterbury Tales " . . 336

319

ILLUSTRATIONS 21
PAGE
62. Rocamadour, general view. From a photograph, obtained
through the kindness of Canon Laporte, of Rocamadour . 338
63. A pUgrim. From the MS. 17 C. xxxviii, fol. 39, in the British
Museum ; travels of Mandeville, English, fifteenth century . 369
64. The fortifieid entrance to the sanctuaries of Rocamadour, built
in the eleventh century, recently restored. From a photograph
obtained as above. No. 62  373
6;. Travelling by sea. From the MS. Harl. 13 19, fol. 7 b. The
subject is the return of Richard II from Ireland to England . 377
66. The southern entrance to St. James of Compostela, twelfth cen
tury, " Plaza de las Platerias " (silversmiths). The present
cathedral, replacing an older one, destroyed by the Moors, was
begun in the middle of the eleventh century, and dedicated in
1211  381
67. A sample of Pilgrims' signs, as sold to them at Walsingham;
from the original in the British Museum  418
68. A blind beggar and his boy. The trick played upon the blind
man by his boy is well knovrai as being one of the incidents
in the first chapter of the sixteenth-century Spanish novel,
" Lazarillo de Tormes." It has long been suspected that the
materials for this chapter were drawn by the Spanish author
from an earlier tale. This drawing and several others that
follow it, never adverted to with reference to " Lazarillo de
Tormes," put the fact beyond a doubt ; they tell in their way
the same tale, and they are of the first part of the fourteenth
century. MS. 10 E. IV., in the British Museum, fol. 217 b ;
see above No. 30  4^9

THE THREE-BRANCHED BRIDGE AT CROWLAND.

Enolisb Ma^fatino %xtc in tbe
fllMbble Hoes (Jfourteentb Century)

INTRODUCTION

" 0, dist Spadassin, iroici un bon resveux j
mais allons nous cacher au coin de la chemine'e et
la passons a'vec les dames nostre 'vie et nostre temps
a enjiler des perles ou a jiler comme Sardanapalm .
^ui ne s" adventure n^a che'val ni mule, ce dist
Salomon.^^ Vie de Gargantua.

AT the present day there are but few wayfarers.
The small trades plyed along the road, in
every chance village, are disappearing before our
newer methods of wholesale manufacture ; more and
more rarely do we see the pedlar unstrap his pack at the
farm door, the travelling cobbler mend by the wayside
the shoes which on Sunday will replace the wooden clogs,
or hear the wandering musician drone at the windows
his oft rehearsed tunes. Professional pilgrims exist no
longer, even quack doctors are losing their credit. It
was far otherwise in the Middle Ages ; many people
were bound to a wandering existence, and started even
from childhood on their life-long journey. Some trotted
their strange industries in the broad sunshine, through the
dust of the highroads ; others skulked in bye-lanes or

24 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
even in coppices, hiding their heads from the sheriff's
officer — may be a criminal, may be a fugitive, " a wolf's
head that any one may cut down," according to the terrible
expression of an English jurist of the thirteenth century.
Among these, many labourers who had broken the villeins
bond, unhappy and oppressed in their hamlets, and
who wandered through the country in quest of work,
as though flight could enfranchise them : but " service
est en le sank " (" service is in the blood "), the magis
trate warned them.^ Among them also, pedlars laden
with petty wares ; pilgrims who from St. Thomas' to
St. James' went begging along the roads, living by alms ;
pardoners, those strange nomads, who sold to the
common people the merits of the saints in paradise ;
mendicant friars and preachers of all sorts who, according
to the times, delivered ardently liberal harangues or
contemptibly selfish discourses at the church doors.
All these had one character in common, namely, that in
the wide extent of country where they passed their
lives, ever on the move, they served as links between
the separated groups of other men who, attached to the
soil by law or custom, spent the whole of their days,
irremovable, under the same sky, on the same ground,
at the same toil.
Pursuing their singular work, these wanderers, who
had seen and experienced so much, served to give
some idea of the great unknown world to the humble
classes whom they met on their way. Together with
many false beliefs and fables they put into the heads of
the stay-at-homes certain notions of extent and of active
life which these would hardly otherwise have acquired ;
above all, they brought to the land-bound men news of
their brethren in the neighbouring province, of their
condition of misery or of happiness, and these were pitied
I "Year Books," 30, 31 Edward I. Edited by A. J. Horwood, for
the Rolls Series, 1863.

INTRODUCTION 25
or envied accordingly, and remembered as brothers or
friends to call upon in the day of revolt.
At a period when, for the mass of mankind, ideas were
transmitted orally and travelled with these wanderers
along the roads, the nomads served as a link between
the human groups of various districts. It would be there
fore of great interest for the historian to know what were
these channels of the popular thought, what life was led by
those who filled such a function, what were their influence
and manners. We shall try to study the chief types of
this race, and shall choose them in England in the fourteenth
century, in a country and at an epoch when their social
importance was considerable. The interest which attaches
to them is of course manifold ; the personality of these
pardoners, professional pilgrims, and minstrels, extinct
species, is in itself curious to scrutinize ; but not more
so than their state of mind and the mode in which they
carried on their businesses, both reacting on the social con
dition of a great people which had just been formed and
was acquiring the features and the character still its own
at the present day. It was the period when, thanks to the
French' wars and the incessant embarrassments of royalty,
the subjects of Edward III and of Richard II gained
a parliament similar to that which we now see ; the period
when, in religious life, the independence of the English
spirit asserted itself through the reforms of Wyclif, the
statutes for the clergy, and the protests of the Good
Parliament ; when, in literature, Chaucer inaugurated
the series of England's great poets, and instead of one
more commonplace dream, Langland^ like Dante, gave
to his compatriots Visions ; when, in short, from noble to
villein was felt a stir which led without excessive revolution
to that true liberty for which we, the French, had
long to envy our neighbours. This epoch is decisive
in the history of the country. It will be seen that in all
the great questions debated in the cloister, in the castle.

26 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
or on the market-place, the part played by the wayfarers,
though scarcely visible at times, was not insignificant.
We must first examine the place of the scene, after
wards the events that happened there ; see what were
the roads, then what were the beings who frequented
them.

PART I
ENGLISH ROADS

OLD LONDON BRIDGE.
(From MS. Roy. i6 F2 in the British Museum.]

CHAPTER I
ROADS AND BRIDGES
THE maintenance of roads and bridges in England
was in the fourteenth century one of those general
charges which weighed, like military service, on
the whole of the nation. All landed proprietors were
obliged, in theory, to watch over the good condition of
the highways ; their tenants had to execute the repairs
for them. The religious houses themselves, owners of
property given in frank almoigne, that is to say, with
a purely charitable object, were dispensed from every
service and rent towards their benefactor, no other charge
being usually left but that of saying prayers or giving
alms for the repose of the donor's soul. It remained,
however, for them to satisfy for public weal the trinoda
necessitas, or triple obligation, which among other duties
consisted in the repairing of bridges. ^
I And possibly, in early times, cf roads also; see McKechnie, " Magna
29

30 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
There existed in England a very considerable network
of roads, the principal of which dated as far back as the
Roman times. The province of Britain had been one of
those where the greatest care had been bestowed upon the
military and commercial ways by the Roman emperors.
" The network of roads in the island," says Mommsen,
"which was uncommonly developed, and for which in
particular Hadrian did much in connection with the
building of his wall, was of course primarily subservient
to military ends ; but alongside of, and in part taking
precedence over the legionary camps, Londinium occu
pies in that respect a place which brings clearly into view
its leading position in traffic." ' In many places are
yet to be found remnants of the Roman highways, the
more important of which were called in Anglo-Saxon
times, and since, Watling Street, Erming Street, the Fosse,
and Ikenild Street. " These Roman ways in Britain
have frequently been continued as the publick roads, so
that where a Roman military way is wanting, the pre
sumption is in favour of the present highroad, if that
be nearly in the same direction." ^ There are two reasons
for that permanence : the first is that the roads were
built by the Romans to supply needs which have not
ceased to be felt ; being cut, for instance, from London
to the north through York ; towards Cornwall along
the sea coast ; towards the Welsh mines, &c. ; the
second reason is the way in which they were built. " A
portion of the Fosse Road which remains at Rad-
stock, about ten miles south-west of Bath, and was
opened in February, 1881, showed the following
construction :
Carta," Glasgow, 1905, p. 353. On the Trinoda or Trimoda Necessitas,
see W. H. Stevenson, in the " EngUsh Historical Review," Oct. 19 14.
I "History of Rome," translated by W. P. Dickson, London, 1886,
book viii. chap. v.
i J. Horsley, "Britannia Romana," London, 1732, p. 391,

ROADS AND BRIDGES 31
" I. Pavimentum, or foundation, fine earth, hard
beaten in.
"2. Statumen, or bed of the road, composed of large
stones, sometimes mixed with mortar.
" 3. Ruderatio, or small stones well mixed with
mortar. " 4. Nucleus, formed by mixing lime, chalk, pounded
brick or tile ; or gravel, sand, and lime mixed with clay.
" 5. Upon this was laid the surface of the paved
road, technically called the summum dorsum." '
All Roman roads were not built with so much care
and in such an enduring fashion ; they were, however,
all of them substantial enough to resist for centuries,
and they remained in use during the Middle Ages. Other
roads besides were opened during that epoch to provide
for new fortified towns and castles, and to satisfy the
needs of great landowners, religious or otherwise.
The keeping of roads and bridges in repair, the latter
included in the trinoda necessitas, was not considered, as
worldly, but rather as pious and meritorious work before
God, of the same sort as visiting the sick or caring for the
poor ; ' men saw in them a true charity for a certain
category of sufferers, namely, travellers ; this is why the
clergy submitted to it. The pious character of this kind of
I H. M. Scarth, " Roman Britain," S.P.C.K., London, 1883, p. 121.
Cf. T. Codrington, "Roman Roads in Britain," S.P.C.K., i<;o3.
^ When Henry VIII gave the lands of the dissolved monastery of
Christ Church to Canterbury Cathedral, he declared that he made this
donation " in order that charity to the poor, the reparation of roads and
bridges, and other pious offices of all kinds should multiply and spread
afar." Elton, "Tenures of Kent," London, 1867, p. 21. The gift is
made " in Uberam, puram et perpetuam eleemosynam." This pious
character was long continued : " As late as the period of the Commonwealth
land and money devoted to the maintenance of bridges and causeys were
definitely included among the charitable uses which were to be unafi^ected
by the sequestration of Bishops' land and other ecclesiastical revenues."
C. T. Flower, " Public Works in Mediaeval Law," Selden Society,
1905, i. p. xxi.

32 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
labour may suffice to prove that the roads were not so safe
or in such a good state as has been sometimes maintained.'
The noblest outcome of the religious spirit prevalent in
the Middle Ages was that disinterested enthusiasm
which, as soon as some distress of humanity became
flagrant, created societies for help and rendered self-
denial popular. One of these distresses was seen, for
example, in the power of the infidel, and the Crusades
were the consequence. The forsaken condition of the
lowest classes in the towns was noticed in the thirteenth
century, and St. Francis sent for the consolation of the
neglected, those mendicant friars at first so justly popular,
and who so promptly fell into disrepute. After the same
fashion travellers were considered as sufferers deserving
pity, and help was given to them to please God. A
religious order with this end in view had been founded
in the twelfth century, that of the Pontiff brothers, or
makers of bridges (j)ons, bridge), which spread into several
countries of the Continent.^ In France they built over
the Rhone the celebrated bridge of Avignon, which
yet preserves four arches of their construction ; and the
one at Pont St. Esprit, which is still in use, nineteen out
of its twenty-five arches dating from the years 1265 to
1309 when it was erected. To break the force of such
a current as that of the Rhone they built, near together,
piers of oblong form, ending in a sharp angle at the
two extremities of their axis,^ and their masonry was
I Thorold Rogers, " History of Agriculture and Prices in England,"
Oxford, 1866, vol. i. p. 138.
J See " Recherches historiques sur les congregations hospitalieres des
freres pontifes," by M. Gregoire, late Bishop of Blois. Paris, 1818.
3 This practice was inherited from the Roman builders, whose formu
laries continued to be transcribed throughout the middle ages. See Victor
Mortet : " Un Formulaire du VIII'^ siecle pour les fondations d'edifices
et de ponts d'apres des sources d'origine antique," in " BuUetin monu
mental . . . de la Societe frangaise d'Archeologie," vol. 71, 1907, p. 443.
The brief chapter in the " Mappse Clavicula " (still copied in the- twelfth

THE OLD BRIDGE AT AVIGNON.
[Twelfth Century ; present state.)

[p- 33.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 35
so solid that in many places the waters have respected
it to the present day, that is, for eight centuries. They
also had establishments on the banks of rivers, and
helped to cross them by boat. Their most memorable
accomplishment was, however, the replacing of the same
ferries and of short-lived, often dangerous timber bridges
by stone ones, the normal progression for river crossing
being, throughout ages, the ford, the ferry, the timber
bridge, the stone bridge. Laymen learnt the secret
of their art and in the thirteenth century began to take
their place. Bridges multiplied in France ; many still
exist, such, for example, as the fine fourteenth-century
bridge at Orthez, the two at Limoges, of the thirteenth
century, one of them with its chapel, the beautiful bridge
at Cahors, where even the machicolated turrets which
formerly served to defend it are still preserved, restored,
it is true, by the clever but strong hand of Viollet
Le Due. I
In England, as in France, wooden bridges had in most
cases preceded stone ones. The former were built of oak,
like the one over the river Lune, in the city of Lancaster,
for which we find John of Gaunt writing to " monsire
Adam de Hoghton, nostre chief forestier de Wyresdale,"
to hand to John Ermyte of Singleton, who had actually
paid for them, one hundred and twenty oak trees from
the said forest of Wyresdale, " selected among the properest
and aptest, such as the said John will designate. And
century), entitled " De fabrica in aqua," recommends that, " Si fabricam
in aqua necesse fuerit erigere, facis arcam triangulana," area meaning caisson.
In this we see, Mr. Mortet writes, " la disposition venue de I'antiquite, trans-
mise et maintenue au moyen-age, de la forme prismatique triangulaire des
avant-becs des ponts " (p. 461). This characteristic was conspicuous, e.g.
in the Avignon and London bridges (see the picture, p. 45) as well as in the
famous Roman Pont du Gard.
' On French medieval bridges stiU in existence, their dates, modes of
construction, crosses and chapels, see C. Enlart, " Manuel d'Archeologie
Franjaise," Paris, 1902, ff. vol. ii. p. 264.

36 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
mind not to fail to act thus, nor cause that the
before mentioned work be thereby delayed in any
way. I
There is no trace in England of establishments founded
by the Bridge Friars, but it is certain that there, as else
where, the works for constructing bridges and highways
had a pious character. To encourage the faithful to take
part in them, Richard de Kellawe, Bishop of Durham from
1311 to 131 6, remitted part of the penance for their sins.
The registry of his episcopal chancery contains frequent
entries such as the following : " Memorandum . . .
his lordship grants forty days indulgence to all who will
draw from the treasure that God has given them valuable
and charitable aid towards the building and repair of
Botyton bridge." Forty days are allowed on another
occasion for help towards the bridge and the highroad
between Billingham and Norton,^ and forty days for the
' May 17, 1373, original in French. " John of Gaunt's Register,"
ed. S. Armitage Smith, London, 191 1, vol. ii. p. 179. The work was
apparently in progress in 1374, since we find, on the 15th of September
of that year, an order to deliver to the same " trois cheisnes covenables "
from Okeden forest. Ibid., p. 240.
2 " Ubi frequens habetur populi transitus." " Registrum Palatinum
Dunelmense," ed. Hardy, RoUs Series, 1875, vol. i. pp. 61 5, 641, a.d. 1314.
This was a quite usual practice. The popes, who had every reason to
be interested in the welfare of the great bridge at Avignon, published
numerous bulls granting indulgences and other spiritual favours to the
benefactors of the edifice. See " BuUaire des indulgences concedees avant
143 1 a I'ceuvre du Pont d'Avignon," pubUshed by the Marquis de Ripert-
Monclar, Paris, 19 12. The work contains the Latin text of papal bulls
of 1281, 1290, 1343, 1353, 1366, 1371, 1397, 1430, 1431. The buU
of 1343, issued by Pope Clement VI, at Avignon, grants to givers " tres
annos et tres quadragenas," and, under certain conditions, a plenary indul
gence at the time of death : " Siquis vero cathoUcus dictis fratribus . . .
secundum quantitatem substancie et quaUtatem . . . de bonis sibi a Deo
coUatis dederit vel transmiserit quoquo modo ad reparacionem dicti pontis,
... si talis infra annum . . . vere penitens ac confessus ab hac luce deces-
serit, volumus et gratia speciali concedimus quod ab omnibus peccatis suis
remaneat absolutus." As for those who should be so bold as to hamper
in any way the collections made by the brothers for their bridge, their
punishment would be nothing less than exgommunication (p. 6),

THE VALENTRfi BRIDGE AT CAHORS.
[Thirteenth Century ; photographed by Mr. Enlart, director of the Trocadero Museum.)

iP- 37-

ROADS AND BRIDGES 39
great road from Brotherton to Ferrybridge. The wording
of this last decree is characteristic :
" To all those, &c. Persuaded that the minds of
the faithful are more ready to attach themselves to pious
works when they have received the salutary encourage
ment of fuller indulgences, trusting in the mercy of God
Almighty and the merits and prayers of the glorious
Virgin his Mother, of St. Peter, St. Paul, and of the most
holy confessor Cuthbert our patron, and all saints, we
remit forty days of the penances imposed on all our
parishioners and others . . . sincerely contrite and
shriven of their sins, who shall help by their charitable
gifts, or by their bodily labour, in the building or in the
maintenance of the causeway between Brotherton and
Ferrybridge on which a great many people pass." ^
Causeways, owing to the abundance of marshy ground,
since drained, were scarcely less needed than bridges
and were also considered a meritorious work. A passage
in Leland well shows what they consisted of, how much
wanted, and what a proper object they were, for generous
minded, pious benefactors : " This cawsey by Skipbridge
towards Yorke hathe a nineteen small bridges on it for
avoydinge and overpassynge carres cuming out of the
mores thereby. One Blackeburne, that was twys maior
of Yorke, made this cawsey and a nothar without one
of the suburbs of Yorke. This Blakeburn hathe a
solemne obiit in the Minstar of Yorke and a.cantuari at
Richemond." ^
Municipal bodies, as well as gilds, those lay brother
hoods imbued with the religious spirit, took care also in
many cases of roads and bridges. The Gild of the Holy
Cross in Birmingham, founded under Richard II, did
this, and their intervention was most valuable, as the
I "Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense," ed. Hardy, Rolls Series, 1875,
vol. i. p. 507.
' " Itinerary," ed. L. T. Smith, vol. v. p. 144.

46 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Commissioners of Edward VI remarked two centuries
later. The gild then " mainteigned . . . and kept in
good reparaciouns two greate stone bridges, and divers
foule and daungerous high wayes, the charge whereof
the towne of hitsellfe ys not hable to mainteign. So that
the lacke thereof wilbe a greate noysaunce to the kinges
maties subjectes passing to and from the marches of
Wales and an vtter ruyne to the same towne, being one of
the fayrest and most proffittuble townes to the kinges
highnesse in all the shyre." '
An example of municipal action can be found in the
Ordinances of Worcester, prescribing that " the Brugge
(bridge) may be overseyn at alle tymes for the surete of
the cite. And that the reparacion of the saide Brugge
be overloked by the chamberleyns every quarter." ^
Whether Queen Mathilda (twelfth century) got
wetted or not, as is supposed, on passing the ford of
the river at Stratford-atte-Bow — that same village where
afterwards the French was spoken at which old Chaucer
smiled — certain it is that she thought she was doing a
meritorious work in constructing two bridges there.3
Several times repaired, Bow Bridge was still standing
in 1839. The queen endowed her foundation, granting
land and a water-mill to the Abbess of Barking with a
perpetual charge thereon for the maintenance of the bridge
and the neighbouring roadway. When the queen died,
an abbey for men was founded at the same Stratford, close
to the bridges, and the abbess hastened to transfer to the
new monastery the property in the mill and the charge
of the reparations. The abbot had them done at first,
I Certificates of Chantries, quoted in " English Gilds, the Original
Ordinances from MSS. of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," ed.
Toulmin Smith. E. E. T. S., 1870, p. 249. Gilds in Rochester,
Bristol, Ludlow, &c., did the same.
"» Text of the time of Edward IV, but " copied from laws still older."
"English Gilds," as above, pp. 374, 411.
3 " Archaeologia," vols. xxvU. p. 77; xxix. p. 380.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 41
then wearied of it, and delegated the care of them to
one Godfrey Pratt. He had built this man a house
on the causeway beside the bridge, and paid him an
annual grant. For a long time Pratt carried out the
contract, " getting assistance," says an inquiry of Edward I,
" from some passers-by, but without often having recourse
to their aid." He also received alms from travellers, and
his affairs prospered. They prospered so well that the
abbot thought he would withdraw his pension ; Pratt
indemnified himself the best way he could. He set up
iron bars across the bridge and made all pay who passed
over, except the rich, for he prudently made exception
" for nobility ; he feared them and let them pass without
molesting them." The dispute only ended in the time

BOW BRIDGE AS IT STOOD BEFORE ITS DEMOLITION IN 1 839.
[From a print dated 1831.)
of Edward II ; the abbot acknowledged his fault ;
resumed the charge of the bridge, and suppressed the
iron bars, the toll, and Godfrey Pratt himself.
This bridge, over which no doubt Chaucer must have
passed, was of stone, the arches were narrow and the
piers thick ; strong angular buttresses strengthened them
and broke the force of the current ; these formed at the
upper part a triangle or siding which served as a refuge
for foot-passengers, for the way was so narrow that a
cart sufficed to fill it. When it was pulled down in
1839, it was found that the method of construction
had been very simple. To ground the piers in the bed
of the river the masons had simply thrown down stones
and mortar till the level of the water had been reached.

44 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
It was remarked also that the ill-will of Pratt or the abbot
or their successors must have rendered the bridge almost
as dangerous at certain moments as the primitive ford.
The wheels of the vehicles had hollowed such deep ruts
in the stone and the horses' shoes had so worn the pavement
that an arch had been at one time pierced through.
No less striking as a case where pious motives caused
the building of a bridge is the contract of the thirteenth
century, by which Reginald de Rosels allowed Peter, Abbot
of Whitby, to erect a permanent bridge on the river Esk,
between his own and the convent's lands. He pledged
himself in that act to permit to all comers free access to
the bridge through his own property. " For which
concession the aforesaid Abbot and convent have absolved
in chapter all the ancestors of the same Reginald of all
fault and transgression they may have committed against
the church of Whiteby and have made them participant of
all the good works, alms, and prayers of the church of
Whiteby." ^ Numerous other examples of the same sort
might be quoted ; but it will be enough to add, as being
perhaps more characteristic of the times than all the rest,
the recommendations which Truth in the " Vision concern
ing Piers the Plowman " makes to the wealthy English
merchants, the number of whom had so largely increased
during the fourteenth century. Truth bids them to do
several works of charity, which he considers of the highest
importance for their salvation ; they ought, among other
things, to " amenden mesondieux," that is, hospitals for
sick people and for travellers ; to repair " wikked wayes,"
that is to say, bad roads ; and also
' . . . brygges to-broke • by the heye weyes
Amende in som manere wise."

I " Cartularium Abbathis de Whiteby," edited by J. C. Atkinson,
Durham, Surtees Society, 1881, vol. ii. p. 401. The original of the Rosels
contract is in Latin.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 43
For this and for helping prisoners, poor scholars, etc.,
they will have no little recompense. When they are
about to die St. Michael himself will be sent to drive
away devils that they be not tormented by evil spirits in
their last moments :
" And ich shal sende yow my-selve • seynt Michel myn Angel
That no devel shal yow dere • ne despeir in youre deyinge.
And sende youre soules • ther ich my-self dwelle." '
The pious character of the bridges was also shown by
the chapels that stood on them. Bow Bridge was thus
placed under the protection of St. Catherine. London
Bridge had a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas of
Canterbury ; « a roomy Gothic building of apsidal form,
with high windows and wrought pinnacles, almost
a church. A miniature in a manuscript, of which a
reproduction on a reduced scale is given at the beginning
of this chapter, shows it fixed on the middle pier, whilst
along the parapet are houses with gabled roofs, whose
storeys project and overhang the Thames.
This was a famous bridge. No Englishman of the
Middle Ages, and even of the Renaissance, ever spoke
but with pride of London Bridge ; it was the great national
wonder ; until the middle of the eighteenth century it
remained (with the exception of some small ones
which have disappeared as well as the narrow waters
that they crossed) 3 the only bridge of the capital. It
had been commenced in 1 176, on the site of an old wooden
' Skeat's edition. Text C, pas. x. 1. 29, et seq.^
^ Most of the French ones were ded^cited to St. Nichola?, patron of
tr..veU rs.
3 Fleet bridge outside Ludgate, Oldboume (Holbom) bridge, both
of stone. Fleet bridge had been repaired by the mayor, John Wels, in
143 1, "for," says Stow, "on the coping is engraven Wels imbraced by
Angels." " Survey of London," ed. Kingsford, Oxford, 1908, 2 vols.,
vol. i. p. 26. The " Survey " had appeared in 1598, and been reprinted,
with important additions in 1603.

44 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
structure, dating back to Saxon times,' by Peter Colechurch,
" priest and chaplain," who had already once repaired the
wooden bridge. The whole nation was stirred by this great
and useful enterprise ; the King, the citizens of London,
the dwellers in the shires endowed the building with lands
and sent money to hasten its completion. The list of
donors was still to be seen in the sixteenth century, on
" a table fayre written for posterity," ^ in the bridge chapel.
A little while before his death in 1 205 another had taken
the place of Peter Colechurch, then very old, as director of
the works. King John, who was in France, struck with
the beauty of the bridges of that country, and having heard
of the magnificent bridge of Saintes which lasted till the
middle of the nineteenth century, and which was approached
by a Roman triumphal arch, chose, as successor to Cole
church, a Frenchman, called Isembert, " master of the
Saintes schools " (1202). Isembert, who had given proof
of his capacity in the bridges of La Rochelle and of
Saintes,3 set out with his assistants, furnished with a royal
patent addressed to the mayor and inhabitants of London.
John Lackland therein vaunted the skill of the master, a
man, he said, " of both knowledge and honesty," and
declared that the revenue arising from the houses that
he would build upon the bridge should be consecrated
for ever to the maintenance of an edifice " so necessary
for you and for all those passing thereby." 4
' " The earliest proof [of the existence of a timber bridge] is in the
record of the drowning of a witch at ' Lundene brigce ' in King Edgar's
time." Kingsford, Stow's " Survey," as above, vol. ii. p. 273.
* Stow's " Survey," i. p. 23. Stow, who examined the accounts of
the bridge wardens for the year i 506 (22 Hen. VII), found that the bridge
expenses were at that time fSi^ 17s. 2d.
3 King John became personally acquainted with those works only at
a later date, viz. June 1206, when he landed at La RocheUe. He visited
Saintes in July and August, and made again some stay at La Rochelle in
October and November before sailing back to England. See his Itinerary
in " A Description of the Patent Rolls in the Tower," by Thomas Duffus
Hardy, London, 1835. 4 See Appendix I. p 425.

\^^v\,-^ ^

N\

, w

v/S

^\\v\

\\\

part of LONDON BRIDGE WITH THE DRAWBRIDGE AND NONE-SUCH HOUSE. [P- +3.
[As it stood about a.d. 1600.)

ROADS AND BRIDGES 47
The bridge was finished in 1209, when four " worthy
marchants of London " had become " principali maisters
of that work." ' It was furnished with houses, a chapel,
and defensive towers. It immediately became celebrated,
and was the admiration of all England. The Scot, Sir
David lindesay, Earl of Crawford, having fallen out with
Lord Welles, ambassador at the Scottish Court, a duel
was decided on, and Lindesay chose London Bridge as
the place of combat (1390). He crossed the length of
the kingdom, supplied with a safe-conduct from King
Richard II, and the duel solemnly came off at the place
fixed in the presence of an immense concourse. The
first shock was so violent that the lances were shivered,
but the Scotchman remained immovable in his saddle.
The people, fearing for the success of the English
diplomat, shouted that his adversary was tied to his horse
against all rules. Hearing this Lindesay, by way of
reply, leapt lightly to the ground, with one bound
returned to the saddle- and, charging his adversary anew,
overthrew and grievously wounded him.^
The houses built on the bridge were several storeys
high ; they had cellars in the thickness of the piers.
When the inhabitants needed water they lowered their
buckets by ropes out of the windows and filled them
in the Thames. Sometimes they helped with their ropes
poor fellows whose boat had capsized : the arches were
narrow, and it was not uncommon in the dark for a
boat to strike against the piers and be dashed to pieces.
The Duke of Norfolk and several others were saved in
this manner in 1428, but some of their companions were
drowned. At other times the inhabitants themselves
had need of help, for it happened occasionally that the
houses, badly repaired, leaned forward and fell in one
I Stow's " Survey," ed. Kingsford, I. p. 23.
^ Ibid., same edition, I. 25 ; II. 274. " Chronicles of London
Bridge," by an Antiquary [Richard Tiipmson], London, 1827, pp. 187-193.

48 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
block into the river. A catastrophe of this kind took
place in 148 1.
One of the twenty arches of the bridge, the thirteenth
from the City side, formed a drawbridge to allow boats to
pass,' and also to close the approach to the town ; this was
the obstacle which in 1553 hindered the insurgents led
by Sir Thomas Wyatt from entering London. Beside
the movable arch rose a tower on the summit of which
the executioner long placed the heads of decapitated
criminals. That of the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas
More, bled for a time on the end of a pike on this tower
before it was redeemed by Margaret Roper, the daughter
of the thinker who had written — " Utopia."
Travellers wondered at the gruesome sight. " In
London," wrote Joseph Justus Scaliger, who visited
the city in 1566, "there ever were many heads on the
bridge. ... I have seen there, as it were [masts]
of ships and at the top of them quarters of men's
corpses." *
In 1576, this tower of sombre memories was splendidly
reconstructed ; the new one, containing fine rooms,
flooded with light by innumerable windows, was entirely
of wood, carved and gilt, in the " paper worke " style
popular in Elizabeth's time, censured by steady Harrison.
It was called " None-such House." The heads of the
" traitors," sometimes traitors, sometimes saints, were no
more to pollute a building so cheerful in aspect ; they
were placed on the next tower on the Southwark side.
Four years after this change, fashionable Lyly the
I As to the toll collected there from certain foreign merchants a.d.
1334, see "Liber Albus," ed. Riley, Introduction, p. 1.
2 " ScaUgerana," under the word " Londres." The editions I have
seen give " mers de navires," the true reading being certainly " mats." An
enlarged portion of Visscher's panoramic view of London, 161 6, showing
the " Bridge Gate " towards Southwark, with numerous mast-like poles
and heads on the top of them, serves as a frontispiece for vol. iii. of my
" Literary History of the English People,"

ROADS AND BRIDGES 49
Euphuist ended one of his books with a triumphal praise
of England, its products, its universities, its capital, adding :
" Among all the straunge and beautiful showes, mee
thinketh there is none so notable as the Bridge which
crosseth the Theames, which is in manner of a continuall
streete, well replenyshed with large and stately houses on
both sides, and situate upon twentie arches, whereof
each one is made of excellent free stone squared, euerye
one of them being three-score foote in height, and full
twentie in distaunce one from an other." '
The same arrangement prevailed in the case of important
bridges in many countries. In Paris the " Notre Dame "
bridge had the appearance of a street with sixty-eight
houses built on it.= The bridge at Poissy 3 and others
were of the same sort, the most famous of those which
remain being the " Ponte Vecchio " in Florence.
Even at the time when Lyly praised London Bridge as
deserving a place among the " straunge and beautiful
' " Euphues and his England," ist ed. 1580; Arber's reprint, 1868,
p. 434. See besidcj the large coloured drawing of about the year 1600 (also
the sketch above, p. 45), in the third part of Harrison's "Description
of England," edited by F. J. FurnivaU for the New Shakspere Society,
1877; ^rid Mr. Wheatley's notes on Norden's Map of London, 1593,
in vol. i. p. Ixxxix of the same work. Visitors coming to London never
failed to notice the bridge as one of the curiojities of the town. Dunbar,
the Scottish poet, in his " London," written in the early years of the six
teenth century, compliments the city on its beauties, and especially its
bridge : " Upon thy lusty brigge of pylers white
Been merchauntis full royall to behold."
The Greek Nicander Nucius of Corcyra, who visited England in 1545-6,
writes in his note-book : " A certain very large bridge is built, affording
a passage to those in the city to the opposite inhabited bank, supported by
stone cemented arches, and having also houses and turrets upon it."
"Travels of Nicander Nucius," Camden Society, 1841, p. 7.
» F. de Belleforset, " L'ancienne et grande cite de Paris," ed. Dufour,
1882, p. 274.
3 See woodcuts in " Le livre des Ordonnances de la ville de Paris,"
published by Verard, 1 500, reproduced by Claudin, " Histoire de I'lm-
primerie," 1900, vol. ii. pp. 498, 499.
4

50 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
showes " of the city, and Stow described it as " a worke
verie rare," the structure was giving more and more
frequent signs of decay. Ben Jonson describes a little
later his Pennyboy senior as minding
" A curtesie no m.ore then London-bridge
What arch was mended last." '
Upon which that sour-mouthed reformer of poetry,
and of bridges, William Gifford, observed in his day :
" Two hundred years have nearly elapsed since this was
written, and the observation still holds. This pernicious
structure has wasted more money in perpetual repairs than
would have sufficed to build a dozen safe and commodious
bridges, and cost the lives, perhaps, of as many thousand
people. This may seem little to those whom it concerns —
but there is blood on the city, and a heavy account is before
them. Had an alderman or a turtle been lost there, the
nuisance would have been long removed." ^
Without specifying whether it was out of fear of
Gifford, or interest in the aldermanic turtle, or perhaps
some higher motives too, the proper authorities took
radical measures as to the bridge in the first part of the
nineteenth century. An attempt was first made to preserve
it with the houses taken down, and broad, solid arches
replacing the old ones in the centre of the stream ; it
had finally to be removed altogether. The present
bridge, built near the site of the old one, replaced
the " straunge and beautiful showe " of Lylyan days,
the " pernicious structure " of Giffordian ones, and was
opened to circulation in 1831, the expense having been
;£i>45^j3^i- It must now live five centuries more to
equal the longevity of its predecessor.
This had been, all its life long, an exceptional bridge,
I " Staple of News," ii. 4 ; acted 1626, ed. De Winter, 1905, p. xviii.
» In "Works of Ben Jonson," London, 1816, v. 215.

TAKING DOWN THE HOUSES ON OLD LONDON BRIDGE.
[From a water-colcur painting by C. Pyne.)

[p- 51.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 53
with a biography of its own, worthy of a biographer, which
it got ; ' the others presented a less grandiose appearance.
People were even very glad to find bridges like the one
at Stratford-at-Bow, in spite of its want of width and its
deep ruts ; or like the wooden bridge over the Dyke
with arches so low and narrow that all water traffic was
interrupted by any slight rising of the level of the water.
The state of this last bridge, which, in truth, was more
of a hindrance than a help to communications, at length
excited the indignation of neighbouring counties. During
the fifteenth century, it was granted, therefore, to the
inhabitants upon their pressing request, that they might
reconstruct the bridge, with a movable arch for boats.^
In the same way disappeared, also in the fifteenth
century, a bridge described by Leland in his " Itinerary "
as having been a " poore bridge of tymber and no causey
to come to it," which crossed the Avon at Stratford. It
was in such a state that " many poore folkys and othar
refusyd to cum to Stratford when Avon was up, or cominge
thithar stoode in jeoperdy of lyfe." The rich Sir
Hugh of Clopton, sometime mayor of London, who was
born at Clopton near Stratford, and died in 1497,
moved by the danger of his compatriots, and " having
never wife nor children, convertid a great peace of his
substance in good workes in Stratford, first making a
sumptuus new bridge and large of stone, wher in the
middle be a vi great arches for the maine streame of Avon
and at eche ende certen smaul arches to bere the causey,
and so to passe commodiously at such tymes as the ryver
risith." 3 This same bridge is still in use, and well deserves
the praise bestowed upon it by Leland. But fine as it
I " Chronicles of London Bridge by an Antiquary " [Richard Thom
son], London, 1827.
^ See Appendix II. p. 426
3 " The Itinerary of John Leland," edited by Miss Lucy Toulmin
Sjnith, London, 1907, vol. ii. pp. 27, 49.

54 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
is, one would have less regretted its disappearance than the
destruction of a " praty house of bricke and tymbre,"
built by the same Hugh of Clopton with the purpose
of ending his days in it. That house was purchased after
wards — also with the intent of ending his life in it — by
a certain countryman of Hugh, who has since become
famous enough, William Shakespeare, who repaired the
house, then called New Place, and died in it in the year
1616. The calling in of the foreign cleric Isembert to superin
tend the works of London Bridge seems to have been
exceptional. The building of ordinary bridges was
usually entrusted to local craftsmen or masons ; and it would
have been strange indeed if the people who could raise
such splendid cathedral naves all over England, had been
at a loss to span rivers with bridges. One of the few
indentures for the building of a bridge which have come
down to us concerns the re-construction of Catterick
bridge, Yorkshire, in 1422, on the great Roman road, the
Erming Street, and the contractors seem to have been
English. The document is curious in many respects.
The contract binds several authorities on the one
hand, and " Tho. Ampilforde, John Garette, and Robert
Maunselle, masons," on the other. It is stated in it
" yat y° foresaides Tho., John, and Rob., schalle make
a brigge of stane oure (over) y" water of Swalle atte Catrik
be twix y*" old stane brigge and y" new brigge of tree (of
wood), quilke forsaid brigge, with y" grace of God, salle
be made sufficiant [and war]kmanly in mason craft
accordand in substance to Barnacastelle brigge, aftir y'^
ground and y'= watyr accordes, of twa pilers, twa land
stathes (abutments), and thre arches." The deed goes
on to give a minute account of the way in which every part
of the work must be performed, of the material that
will be used, and of the time when the bridge must be
entirely finished and open to circulation : " And y'

HUG:I of clopton's BRIDGE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.
[Fifteenth Ceuturv.\

ip. 55.

ROADS AND BRIDGES S7
saides John, Tho., and Rob., schalle this forsaid brigge
sufficiantly in masoncraft make and fully perfurnist in all
partiez and holy endyd be y" Fest of Seint Michille y'=
Arcangelle quilk y' shalle fall in y" yere of our Lorde Gode
M'^^'ccccxxv." It is understood besides that they will
receive in payment, at certain fixed dates, " gounes,"
and also sums of money, the total of which will be 260
marks sterling. i
The bridge built by the three masons, John, Thomas,
and Robert, is still in existence, but it has undergone
great and grievous alterations.
We have already seen some examples of the means
employed at this period to secure the maintenance of
these valuable constructions, when that maintenance had
to be ensured by something more than the charges incident
to the ownership of the neighbouring lands (trinoda neces
sitas) ; we know that it was sometimes provided through
" indulgences " promised to benefactors, sometimes by
the action of gilds, or municipalities, sometimes also by
the endowments with which one of the great would enrich
the bridge founded by him. But without speaking of
occasional gifts,^ several other methods were employed
with success, even with profit, such as the lawful
levying of those tolls which Godfrey Pratt had arbitrarily
imposed on his fellow citizens, or the collection of pious
offerings made at the chapel of the bridge and to its
warden. The right of toll was called brudtholl (bridge-
toll) or pontagium ; the grantee, to whom the benefit went,
bound himself in return to make all the necessary repairs.
Sometimes the King accorded the right as a favour during
a certain period, as appears, for example, from the fol-
I "The North Riding Record Society," edited by the Rev. J. C.
Atkinson, London, vol. iii. part i. p. 33.
» Edward III gives the not insignificant sum of ,^1 5 for the reparation
of the bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. " Roll pf Thomas de Brantingham,"
ed. Devon, p. 392, 44 Ed. Ill,

58 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
lowing petition, which is of the time of Edward I or
Edward II :
" To our lord the king, prays his vassal William of
Latymer lord of Yarm,i that he will grant him pontage
for five years at the bridge of Yarm, which is broken
down, where men were wont to pass with carts and with
horses on the king's highway between the water of Tees
towards Scotland. May it please him to do this for the
soul of Madame his consort, who is to God commended,
and for the common profit of the people who pass." The
King's reply was favourable : " The King grants the
pontage for the term." •
Some of the tariffs in force at certain bridges during
the fourteenth century have come down to us and have
been printed ; the most detailed of these is of the year
1306, and concerns London Bridge. It is annexed to a
patent of Edward I, and enumerates not only passengers,
carriages, and animals of every quality or description,
but also every sort of " saleable " ware which may pass
either on or under the bridge : though it may seem some
what unfair to have drawn money from shipmen towards
the expenses of a structure that was their most for
midable competitor.3 This list, which is a great help
in forming an exact idea of the commodities brought
' Yarm on the Tees, 44 miles north-north-west of York. The " king's
highway " in question is the highroad from Scotlandj leading to the
south, through York and London. The bridge was re-built in 1400
by Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham.
* " Rolls of Parliament," vol. i. p. 468. The right of pontage is fre
quently mentioned in the " Liber Custumarum," edited by Riley, Rolls
Series. 3 " Sciatis quod, in auxilium Pontis London, reparandi et sust;ntandi,
concessimus vobis quod . . . capiatis ibidem de rebus venalibus ultra pontem
predictum et subtus eundem transeuntibus consuetudines subscriptas, vide
licet . . ." Then follows a very long list of dues. Text in Hearne's
" Liber niger Scaccarii . . . Accedunt charts antiquae," London, 1774,
yol. i. p. 478*.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 59
to London by land or by river, covers no less than four
pages of printed matter : including coal, timber, beer,
wines, horses, cattle^ pig^j g^^i"? sheep, butter and cheese,
fish, furs and skins, metal pots and cups, millstones, silk
and other cloths, etc. ; the place they come from is some
times mentioned: Northampton, Flanders, Normandy.
Another very curious petition (1334) will show the
use of the other mode, that is, the collection of voluntary
offerings from charitable passers-by. The share of the
clergy in the care of these buildings, the greediness with
which the profitable right of collecting the gifts was
disputed, and the embezzlements sometimes resulting
therefrom are to be noticed :
" To our lord the king and his Council showeth their
poor chaplain, Robert le Fenere, parson of the church of St.
Clement, of Huntingdon, of the diocese of Lincoln, that
there is a little chapel lately built in his parish on the
bridge of Huntingdon, the keeping of which chapel our
lord the king has granted and delivered during pleasure
to one Sir Adam, warden of the house of St. John of
Huntingdon, who receives and takes away all manner
of offerings and alms without doing anything for the
repair of the bridge or of the said chapel as he is bound
to do. On the other hand, it seems hurtful to God and
Holy Church that offerings should be appropriated to
any one except to the parson within whose parish the
chapel is founded. Wherefore the said Robert prays,
for God and Holy Church and for the souls of our lord
the king's father and his ancestors, that he may have the
keeping of the said chapel annexed to Ms church, together
with the charge of the bridge, and he will take heed with
all care to maintain them well, with better will than any
stranger, for the profit and honour of Holy Churchy
to please God and all people passing that way." f
f "Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 88,

6o ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
This jumble of human and divine interests (from
the birthplace, that was to be, of Oliver Cromwell)
was submitted to the usual examination, and the re
quest was set aside, with the following note : " Non
est peticio parliamenti " ; it is not a petition for
Parliament. In many cases, the bridge was itself at once pro
prietor of real estate and beneficiary of the offerings made
to its chapel, and sometimes also grantee of a right of
toll ; it had income from both civil and religious sources.
Such were notably the bridges of London, of Roches
ter, i of Bedford, and many others. John de Bodenho,
chaplain, explains to Parliament that the inhabitants
of Bedford hold their own town at farm from the king,
and have undertaken to maintain their bridge, For
this they " assigned certain tenements and rents in the
said town to support it, and with their alms have newly
built an oratory on the side of the water belonging to
Lord Mowbray, by leave of the lord, adjoining the said
bridge." The burgesses gave to the plaintiff the charge
of the reparations, together with the whole revenues.
But the priest, John of Derby, represented to the king
that it was a royal chapel which he might dispose of,
and the king has given it to him, which is very unjust,
since the chapel is not the king's ; even those who founded
it are still living. All these reasons were found good ;
the judges were ordered to grant the plaintiff's plea, and
' See Hist. MSS. Commission, 9th Report, part i. p. 284. On the
Rochester bridge, at first a wooden one, later rebuilt in stone, and on its
upkeep, see " Rolls of Parliament," vol. ni. p. 254, 21 Ric. II, 1397. A
view of the bridge appears on several seals, some repioduced in De Gray
Birch, "Seals in . . . the British Museum," London, 1887, 2 vols.,
No. 5336. On this important bridge and its biograpAy, see C. T. Flower,
"PubUc Works in Media;val Law," 1905, Selden Society, I., p. 203.
Like many others, this vtry frequented bridge, on the road from London
to Canterbury, and which existed long before the Conquest, was first of
¦yvood, then of stone, and is now (since 1856) of iron,

ROADS AND BRIDGES 6i
were reprimanded for not having done it sooner, as had
already been prescribed to them.'
Enriched by so many offerings, protected by the
trinoda necessitas, and by the common interest of the landed
proprietors, these bridges should have been continually
repaired, and have remained sound. But there was nothing
of the sort, and the distance between legal theory and
actual practice was great. When the taxes were regularly
collected and honestly applied, they usually sufficed
to support the building ; even the right of collecting
them, being in itself profitable, was, as has been seen,
strongly contested for ; but the example of Godfrey
Pratt and of some others has already shown that all the
wardens were not honest. Many, even in the highest
positions, imitated Godfrey. London Bridge itself, so
rich, so useful, so admired, was in constant need of re
pairs, never done until danger was imminent, or even
a catastrophe had happened. Henry III granted the
farm of the bridge revenues " to his beloved wife," who
neglected to maintain it, and appropriated to herself
without scruple the rents of the building ; none the less
did the king renew his patent at the expiration of the term,
that his said beloved might benefit " from a richer favour."
The result was not long awaited ; it was soon found
that the bridge was in ruins, and to restore it the
ordinary resources were not enough ; it was necessary
to send collectors throughout the country to gather offer
ings from those willing to give. Edward I, in January
12 8 1, begged his subjects to hasten ; the bridge would
give way if they did not send prompt assistance. He
ordered the archbishops, bishops, all the clergy, to allow
his collectors to address the people freely with " pious
exhortations," that the subsidies should be craved with
out delay. But nevertheless the supplies arrived too
late ; the catastrophe had already happened, a " sudden
I "Rolls of Parliament," vol. n. p. lOO, year 1338.

62 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
ruin " had befallen the bridge, and to repair this mis
fortune the king established a special tax upon the
passengers, merchandise and boats (February 4, 1282),
which tax was imposed again and the new tariff afore
mentioned was put into force on May 7, 1306. What
this sudden ruin was we learn from Stow's " Annales " ;
the winter had been very severe, the frost and snow
had caused great cracks in the floor of the bridge, so that
towards the Feast of the Purification (February 2), five
of the arches fell in. Many other bridges, too, in the
country had suffered damage, Rochester Bridge had even
entirely fallen.'
It may be imagined what fate awaited unendowed
country bridges. The alms from the passers-by proved
insufficient, so that little by little, nobody repairing them,
the arches wore through, the parapets were detached,
not a cart passed but fresh stones disappeared in the river,
and soon carriages and riders could not venture without
danger over the half demolished building. If more
over a flood should occur, all was over with the bridge
and often with the imprudent or hurried travellers who
might be crossing late in the evening. An accident
of this kind was brought up for his justification by
a chamberlain of North Wales, from whom Edward III
claimed a hundred marks. The chamberlain averred
that he had duly sent the money by his clerk, William
of Markeley ; but, alas, " the said William was drowned
in Severn, at Moneford bridge, by the rising flood of
water, and could not be found, so that he was devoured
by beasts ; thus the said hundred marks chanced to be
I " King Edward kept his feast of Christmas (1281) at Worcester.
From this Christmas tUl the purification of Our Lady, there was such a
frost and snow, as no man living could remember the Uke, wherethrough
five arches of London Bridge, and all Rochester Bridge were borne downe,
and carried away with the streame, and the like hapned to many bridges
in England." Stow's " Annales," London, 163 1, p. 201 . See Appendix III.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 63
lost." ' At that time there were still wolves in England,
and the disappearance of the body, with the 100 marks,
though even then wolves did not feed on marks, would
appear less unlikely than at present.
In those days neglect attained a degree now impossible
and which we can scarcely imagine. The Commons of the
counties of Nottingham,Derby, and Lincoln, and of the town
of Nottingham., declare to the Good Parliament of 1376,
that there is near the town of Nottingham a great bridge
over the Trent, called Heybethebridge, " to the making
and repair of which nobody is bound and alms only are
collected, by which bridge all the comers and goers be
tween the north and the south parts should have their
passage." This bridge is " ruinous," and " oftentimes
have several persons been drowned, as well horsemen
as carts, man, and harness." The complainants pray
for power to appoint two bridge wardens, who shall
administer the property that will be given in view of its
maintenance, " for God and as a work of charity."
But the king did not accede to their request. ^
Or maybe it happened that the riverside proprietors
let their obligation fall into oblivion, even when it was
at the beginning formal and precise enough. The legis
lator had, however, taken some precautions ; he had
inscribed bridges on the list of the articles for those in
quiries periodically opened in England by the justices
in Eyre, sheriffs and bailiffs, as we shall see further on 3 ;
but those concerned found means to defraud the law.
People had been so long used to see ruin menace the
edifice, that when it actually did give way no one could
say who ought to have repaired it. It then became neces-
• "Rolls of Parliament," vol. U. p. 91 (9 Edward III), 1335.
^ Ibid., p. 350.
3 " De pontibus et calcetis fractis et communibus transitibus, quis ea
reparare debeat et sustinere." " Fleta " (end of thirteenth ceritury, below
p. Ill), I. ch. 20, § 41.

64 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
sary to apply to the king for a special inquiry, and to
seek on whom lay the service. Parliament thus decides
in 1339, on the demand of the prior of St. Neots : " Item,
let there be good and true men assigned to survey the
bridge and causeway of St. Neots, whether they be broken
down and carried away by the rising of the waters, as the
prior alleges, or not. And in case they are broken down
and carried away, to inquire who ought and was used
to have it repaired, and who is bound of right to do it ;
and how the bridge and roadway may be re-made and
repaired. And what they ' find they shall return into
the chancery."
In consequence of such inquests the persons charged
with the maintenance being determined by the findings
of a jury convened on the spot, a tax is levied upon them
for the carrying out of the repairs. But they often protest
and refuse to pay ; they are sued, they appeal to the king,;
horse, cart, anything that may come to hand and which
belongs to them is promptly seized to be sold for the
benefit of the bridge ; the dispute drags on, and mean
while the edifice gives way. Hamo de Morston, for
example, in the eleventh year of Edward II, complains
that his horse has been taken from him. Called to
justify themselves, Simon Porter and two others who
have made the seizure, explain that there is a bridge at
Shoreham, called the Long bridge, which is half destroyed;
now it has been found that the building ought to be
restored at the expense of the tenants of the Archbishop
of Canterbury. Hamo, who is one of them, having
refused to pay his part of the contribution, Simon and
the others took the horse. They acted by order of a
bailiff, and their conduct is vindicated. Another case
of the same period is that of the Abbot of Coggeshall
who, after a similar inquest, refused to execute any
I /.-". the jury " of good and true men." " Rolls of Parliament,"
vol. ii. p. III.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 65
repairs to a bridge near his lands under pretext that
within memory of man there had been no other bridge
over the river " than a certain plank of board," and
that at all times it had been found sufficient for horse
men and pedestrians. Innumerable are the examples of
inquests of this sort and of the difficulties in executing
the measures decided on.'
Owing to these several causes the chronicle-history
of even the most important English bridges, when it
is possible to trace it, is a long tale of crumblings
into the river, rebuildings, and repairs, and ever-recurring
catastrophes. Sometimes when the damage was great,
and much money was needed and was not forthcoming,
a ferry was established as a substitute for the late bridge,
and remained in use for years and years together.
Such a series of events is offered by the history of the
bridge on the Tweed at Berwick, which was one of the
longest in England. The first time we hear of it is in
the year 1199, and the news is that it gave way at that
date, owing to a rise of the river. It was rebuilt and gave
way again. Sometimes it was rebuilt of wood and some
times of stone ; occasionally it fell altogether from end
to end, and then a ferry was established, and was main
tained for a long period. This was the case in 1294,
when great harm was done by the inundations. " Where
the bridge fell at this time," says the latest historian of
Berwick, " there it lay for many years. The only method
of crossing was by ferry boats, worked from both
sides of the river ; while the ferry in times of danger
was defended by soldiers. Thus, in Sir Robert Heron's
(the controller) 'Book of Bills' for 13 10, there is
allowed one half quarter of pease to each of six cross-
bowmen (one of them being John Sharp Arewe) guard
ing the ferry of the Tweed at Berwick." ' The ferry
' Several instances will be found in Appendix IV. p. 429.
» John Scott, " Berwick-upon-Tweed," London, 1888, p. 408, et seq.
5

66 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
follows vicissitudes scarcely less numerous than the bridge
itself, and disputes arise as to the right of working it,
or rather of collecting its tolls. The revenues of the
bridge, now that there is no longer any bridge, are also
a matter of difficulty, and the king has to interfere to
settle the question of the rents of houses and of fisheries
belonging to the ruined monument.
In 1347 at last the citizens of the town began to think
seriously of rebuilding their bridge, and the king granted
them the right of collecting towards the expenses a toll
of sixpence on every ship entering their harbour. The
bridge was then rebuilt, but not in such a way as not
to fall again, which has since happened to it many times.
Not less doleful is the story of the bridge on the Dee
at Chester, of which we hear in the chronicles for the
first time in 1227 and 1297, on account of its being
carried away by the water, ' and the same may be said
of many of the bridges of mediaeval England, especially
the longer ones.
When rebuilding had to be done people generally
did not care to remove what remained of the old monu
ment, for which reason, when a bridge has broken down
in our time, it has been often found that it was made
of an accumulation of superimposed bridges. Of this
the bridge over the Teign, between Newton Abbot and
Teignmouth, rebuilt in 1 8 1 5, is an example. It became,
in this case, apparent that four successive bridges at least
had been at various times erected with or over the remains
of previous constructions. Mr. P. T. Taylor, who in
vestigated the matter at that time, gave as his opinion
" that the last or upper work was done in the sixteenth
century, and that the red bridge had been built on the
salt marsh in the thirteenth century ; since which time
there has been an accumulation of soil to the depth of
ten feet. He supposes the wooden bridge to be as old
' Ormerod, "History of Chester," 1819, vol. i. p. 285.

THE CHAPEL ON THE BRIDGE AT WAKEFIELD.
[Fourteenth Century ; present state. )

IP- 67.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 69
as the Conquest, and the white stone bridge to have been
a Roman work." i
Given these circumstances, it is rather a matter of
surprise than otherwise to find that a good number of
mediaeval bridges still subsist in England ; the more so
as the nineteenth century has been a great destroyer of
bridges. The enormous increase of population and the
proportionate want of means of communication during
that period has proved fatal to many bridges, and
especially to the more famous and important ones which
had been built in the more largely populated districts.
Owing to such necessities London Bridge itself has dis
appeared, and even the recollection of the long years,
during which it had been, so to say, a factor in English
history and associated with the life of the nation, could
not save it.
Many others had the same fate, or were, at least, as
at Norwich, Durham, Chester, Wakefield, Monmouth, and
elsewhere, partly rebuilt or enlarged, not always in such a
way as to retain much of their pristine appearance. For all
that, however, enough of them remain to give an accurate
idea of what they were, without having recourse merely
to descriptions or drawings in contemporary manuscripts.
None, it is true, can for elegance and completeness compete
with such bridges as are still to be found in France ; for
example, with the magnificent thirteenth-century bridge
of Valentre at Cahors, of which a picture has been
given above (p. 47). Those that remain are sufficient,
nevertheless, to testify to the skill of old English architects
in that branch of their art. As might have been expected,
these bridges abound chiefly in those parts of the country
where the increase of traffic and population has been the
least conspicuous, on roads little more frequented to-day
than in the Middle Ages, which then led to strong castles
or flourishing monasteries, and only lead now to ivy-
I " Archzologia," t. xix. p. 310.

70 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
clad ruins. For this reason they are more numerous in
some parts of Wales than anywhere in England.
In several cases the chapels which placed them under
the protection of a saint and where offerings were collected
have escaped the hand of the restorer and are still extant.
There is one, of the fifteenth century, at Rotherham, York
shire, " a chapel of stone wel wrought," says Leland i ;
another, a fine small one, is to be seen on the bridge
at Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire ; a third, a very tall
structure, stands on the middle of the bridge at
St. Ives, Huntingdonshire ; but the finest example by
far is the chapel on the bridge at Wakefield, both
chapel and bridge dating from the fourteenth century.
Leland mentions them as " the faire bridge of stone of
nine arches, under which runnith the river of Calder,
and on the east side of this bridge is a right goodly chapel
of our lady and two cantuarie preestes founded in it."
This foundation was made about 1358 ; Edward III, by
a charter dated at Wakefield, settled " ;£io per annum
on William Kaye and William Bull and their successors
for ever to perform divine service in a chapel of St. Mary
newly built on the bridge at Wakefield." 2
In our century the bridge has been widened towards
the west, the arches being round on that side and having
been left Gothic on the other. The chapel, the founda
tions of which rest on an island in the river, was
repaired in 1 847, but its original style was carefully re-
spected.3 The greatest change is in the surroundings,
where nothing recalls either Dr. Primrose or the clear
' The date is shown by a wiU of the 24th of August, 1483, in which
a sum is left towards the building of the chapel to be erected on Rotherham
Bridge. See J. Guest, " Historic Notices of Rotherham," Worksop,
1879, fol., pp. 125-6. Two views of the bridge and chapel are given,
pp. 126 and 581.
* Camden's " Britannia," ed. Gough, vol. iii., Lond., 1789, pp. 38-9.
3 T. KUby, " Views in Wakefield," 1843, fol. ; J. C. and C. A. Buckler,
"Remarks upon Wayside Chapels," Oxford, 1843.

THE BRIDGE WITH A DEFENSIVE TOWER AT WARKWORTH, NORTHUMBERLAND.
[Fourteenth Century , present state.)

IP- 71.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 73
waters of Plantagenet times ; and the smoke and refuse
of innumerable manufactures blacken the bridge, the
chapel, the river, and even the sky itself.
Several specimens also remain of bridges with the
triangular recesses we have mentioned, left on the top
of the piers for the safety of foot passengers. Among
many other examples may be quoted the beautiful four
teenth-century bridge at Warkworth, Northumberland,'
which also deserves notice for another characteristic much
more rarely to be met with, that is, the preservation of
the tower built at one end for its defence. Most of the
bridges of any importance were protected in this way,
which, as the country became quieter, was found useless ;
the consideration that they were ornamental rarely suf
ficed to prevent their being pulled down. Those at
Chester were removed in 1 782-1 784 ; those at York
were demolished with the bridge itself, of the thirteenth
century, at the beginning of the nineteenth ; the
Durham one, built on Framwellgate Bridge, in 1760 ;
the beautiful fortified entrance to one of the two bridges
at Shrewsbury disappeared in the same century, as well
as the whole structure, with the picturesque old houses
it bore. It must be conceded that those towers were
sometimes very inconvenient. A witness of the fact told
me that, quite recently, a gipsy's caravan was stopped at
the tower on Warkworth Bridge, being unable to pass
under it owing to the lowness of the arch. The pavement
had to be hollowed out to allow of the caravan's pro
ceeding on its way.
The best example of a defensive tower is the machi
colated one at Monmouth, on the Monnow Bridge ;
except for the opening of passages to be used by people
on foot, the fortified gate looks as it did in the Middle
I " Twenty marks were left towards the rebuilding of this bridge,
by John Cook, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2 Rich. II, 1 379-" E. Mackenzie,
"View of the County of Northumberland," 1825, vol. ii. p. in.

74 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Ages. The bridge itself, familiar to the Monmouth-
born " Prince Hal " of Shakespeare, and of England, has,
been, however, widened, as at Wakefield and elsewhere.
The ribs of the ancient arches are still visible within the
modern ones.
In Elizabethan times defensive towers for bridges
continued to be built, but in poetry only. Spenser raised,
in his lines, a beautiful structure, of Doric style, as befitted
the Renaissance days in which he lived, at the entrance
to the island of Venus :
It was a bridge ybuilt in goodly wize.
With curious corbes and pendants graven faire,
And arched all with porches, did arize
On stately pillours, fram'd after the Doricke guize.
And for defence thereof, on th' other end
There reared was a castle faire and strong,
That warded all which in and out did wend.
And flancked both the bridges sides along. '
But, except as castles in the air, such fortifications
were no longer in demand.
The rarest of all bridges are, nowadays in England,
those having houses on them, as was the fashion in the
Middle Ages. The picturesque High Bridge at Lincoln,
originally built in the i2th century, still preserves the
lodgings built over it ^ ; a solitary house remains on Elvet
Bridge at Durham, and the only bridge of some length,
with a complete row of houses, is a comparatively recent
one, being the familiar Pulteney Bridge built at Bath by
William Pulteney in the eighteenth century.
' " Faerie Queene," Bk. iv. canto x.
2 Mentioned by Leland : " High Bridge hath but one great arch, and
over a pece of it is a chapelle of St. George " (" Itinerary," ed. L. T.
Smith, i. 29), which chapel had been first dedicated to St. Thomas of Canter
bury, but had apparently just been rebapti.ed, when Leland saw it,
Henry VIII having decided by a proclamation of November 16, 1538,
that other saints might be saints, but this one was not.

THE DEFENSIVE TOWER ON THE MONNOW BRIDGE, MONMOUTH. [P- 75-

ROADS AND BRIDGES

77

The more numerous of the mediaeval bridges still in
existence are those of one arch ; there are many of them
in Wales, some being most elegant and picturesque, such
as the famous Devil's Bridge over the Mynach, near Abery-
stwith. In England the largest is the one over the moat
of Norwich Castle ; and the most curious the three-
branched one at Crowland, this last belonging in its

THE BRIDGE NEAR DANBY CASTLE, YORKSHIRE.
{Fourteenth Century.)
actual state to the fourteenth century. It is no longer
used, as no road passes over it and no water under. ^ Another
of the finest, and one of the least known, crosses the Esk,
near Danby Castle, Yorkshire. Its date is about 1385 ;
the arms of Neville, Lord Latimer, who had it built, are
yet to be seen at the top of the parapet.
Lastly, a word may be said of the larger bridges, most

I See a sketch of it, above, p. 21.

78 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
of which have unfortunately undergone great alterations
and repairs. Besides the Wakefield Bridge above men
tioned, there is one over the Dee, at Chester, part of
which is as old as the thirteenth century, thoroughly
repaired since Ormerod disrespectfully described it as
" a long fabric of red stone extremely dangerous and
unsightly." ' At Durham there are the Framwellgate
and Elvet bridges, both originally built in the twelfth
century. A six-arched bridge, rebuilt in the fifteenth
century, exists at Hereford ; another, repaired in 1449,
with the help of indulgences, remains at Bidford.^ A
four-arched one, built in the fourteenth century, over
the Dee is to be seen at Llangollen, being " one of the
Tri Thlws Cymru, or three beauties of Wales ; " 3 the
arches are irregular in size, for the builder, in this and
many other cases, minding more the solidity of the struc
ture than its regularity, erected the piers at the places
where the presence of rocks in the bed of the river
made it most convenient. A very noteworthy one is the
thirteenth-century bridge over the Nith, at Dumfries, in
Scotland, which had formerly thirteen arches, seven of
which only are now in use. It was long considered the
finest after that of London. Other mediaeval bridges of
several arches remain at Huntingdon,4 at St. Ives, at Nor
wich (Bishop's Bridge), at Potter Heigham (a most pictu
resque one), at Tewkesbury, etc. 5 The Tewkesbury one,
with the middle arch enlarged in modern times, but the
I " History of Chester," London, 1819, vol. i. p. 285.
s Dugdale, "Warwickshire," 1730, n. 724.
3 J. G. Wood, "The Principal Rivers of Wales," London, 1813,
vol. ii. p. 271.
4 The Countess of Norfolk complains to Parliament that, contrary to
their franchise, her tenants have been compeUed to contribute towards the
buUding of the bridge at Huntingdon. " RoUs of ParUament," i Ric. II,
year 1377.
s See F. Stone, " Picturesque Views of the Bridges of Norfolk," Nor
wich, 1830. Rough sketches of more than thirty old EngUsh bridges
appear in a curious engraving by Daniel King (seventeenth century).

ROADS AND BRIDGES 79
triangular recesses for foot passengers still in use, dates
back to King John, teste Leland, whose biography of
the bridge shows that it went through the vicissitudes
usual in the life of such buildings : " King John beyng
Erie of Glocester by his wife caussid the bridge of Twekes-
byri to be made of stone. He that was put in truste to
do it first made a stone bridge over the gret poure of booth
the armes [of the Avon] by north and weste : and after,
to spede and spare mony, he made at the northe ende a
wodde bridge of a greate length for sodeyne land waters,
putting the residue of the mony to making of the castel
of Hanley . . .
" King John gave to the mayntenance of this bridge
the hole tolle of the Wensday and Saturday markets in
the towne, the which they yet possesse, turnyng it rather
holely to their owne profit then reparation of the
bridge." '
The maintenance of the roads much resembled that
of the bridges ; that is to say, it greatly depended upon
chance, opportunity, or the goodwill or piety of those to
whom the adjoining land belonged. In the case of roads,
as of bridges, petitions were sent to Parliament asking
that a tax be levied for the repair of the road upon
those who used it : an early attempt at the establishment
of that toll system which survived in England until
the highways were " disturnpiked " in the second half
of the nineteenth century. " Walter Godelak of Waling-
ford, prays for the establishment of a custom to be
bearing as a title : " An orthographical designe of .severall viewes vpon ye
road in England and Wales," and as a subscription : " This designe is to
illustrate Cambden's Britannia, that where he mentions such places the
curious may see them, which is the indeavour, by Gods assistance, of
"Y. S. DanieU King."
A copy is bound in the MS. Had. 2073, as fol. 126. Catterick Bridge
{supra p. 54) is among the bridges there represented.
I " The Itinerary of John Leland," ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, London,
1907, 5 vols., iv. p. 137.

8o ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
collected from every cart of merchandise using the road
between Jowermersh and Newenham, on account of the
depth and for the repair of the said way. Reply : The
King will do nothing therein." ' Again, a lady arrogates
to herself the right to levy a tax on all comers : "To
our lord the King show the commonalty of the people of
Nottinghamshire passing between Kelm and Newur, that
whereas the King's highway between the said two towns
has been wont to be for all persons freely to pass, on horse
back, in carts, and on foot from time immemorial, the
Lady of Egrum has got hold to herself of the said road
in severalty, taking from those passing along there grievous
ransoms and exactions, in disheritance of the King and his
crown and to the great hurt of the people." The king
orders an inquest.-
Even a bishop would occasionally set a bad example,
though bound more than any to set a good one. The
inhabitants of Huntingdonshire and " the Island of
Ely" remonstrate in 1314-15, because the men of those
parts, either on foot or on horseback, have always used
the Horketh causeway, " which causway the bishop of
Ely is bound to repair and maintain, they say, for certain
rents which he gets ; and the causway is broken by the
fault of the bishop, and the same bishop does not allow
ships to pass there under the bridge without levying a
heavy water tax (" theolonium "), which tax ought to be
applied to the reparation and maintenance of the same
bridge and causway, and they crave remedy." An
inquest is ordered. 3
Sometimes the sheriffs in their turns ordered the levy
of taxes on those who did not repair the roads ; the law,
as we have seen, allowed it ; but those who were fined
protested before Parliament under the pretext that the
I " Rolls of Parliament," vol. i. p. 48, 18 Edward I, a.d. 1289.
i Ibid., vol. i. p. 424; 18 Edward II, 1324.
3 Ibid., vol. i. p. 314; 8 Edward II.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 81
roads and the bridges were " sufficient enough " : —
" Item, humbly pray the Commons of your realm, as well
spiritual as temporal, complaining that several sheriffs
of your kingdom feign and procure presentments in their
turns that divers roads, bridges, and causways are defective
from non-reparation, with purpose and intent to amerce
abbots, priors, and seculars, sometimes up to ten pounds,
sometimes more, sometimes less, and levy the said amerce
ments by their officers called out-riders, without delay
or any reply of the parties, in places where the said roads,
bridges, and causeys are sufficient enough, or perhaps are
not in charge of the said amerced men." Reply : " Let
the common law be kept, and the amercements reasonable
in this case." ^
Where negligence began, the ruts, or rather the quags,
began. Those numerous little subterranean arches, which
the foot-passenger now does not even notice, made to
carry off rivulets dry during a part of the year, did not
exist then, and the rivulet flowed through the road. In
the East at the present day, the caravaneers talk in the
bazaars of the town about the roads and pathways ; we
speak of them ourselves on returning home, as books of
travel show. There, however, a road is often nothing else
than a place along which men are accustomed to pass ; it
little resembles the dignified highways the idea of which the
word road evokes in European minds. During the rainy
season pools of water cut off the ordinary track of the
horsemen and camels ; they increase little by little, and at
1 " Rolls of Parliament," vol. Ui. p. 598 ; 7 and 8 Henry IV.
In the same way as for bridges, taxes were sometimes levied but misapplied.
See, in C. T. Flower, " PubUc Works in Mediaeval Law," 1905, i. p. 25,
how WiUiam Caldecote of Aylesbury had been duly authorized to levy
a tax of one penny or one half-penny on carts of various sorts, and one farthing
on " every horse carrying goods for sale that should pass along Walton
street which leads from Walton to Aylesbury for the maintenance of the
said road, and that whereas the said William so received in 1 1 Rich. II
over and above the sum spent on the repair of the road 24s. which remain
in his hands, the road is flooded and dangerous by his default."
6

82 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
length overflow and form temporary rivers. At evening the
sun sets in the heavens and also in the empurpled road ;
the innumerable puddles along the way, dotting the ground,
reflect the red flaming clouds ; the wet horses and splashed
riders shiver in the midst of all these glimmerings, while
overhead and underfoot the two suns approach one another
to meet on the horizon. The roads of the Middle Ages
sometimes were like those of the modern East ; the sun
sets were magnificent after showers, but to face long
journeys one had to be a robust horseman, inured to
fatigue, with unshakable health. The usual education and
training prepared people, it is true, for all these trials.
The roads in England would have been entirely im
passable, and religious zeal would, no more than the
indulgences of the Bishop of Durham and his peers, have
been sufficient to keep them in condition, if the nobility
and the clergy, that is to say, the mass of the landed
proprietors, had not had an immediate and daily interest
in maintaining possible roads. The English kings had
had the prudence not to form great compact fiefs like
those which they themselves owned in France, and which
made of them such dangerous vassals. Their own example
had taught them, and, from the beginning, they are
found distributing to the shareholders in that great
undertaking, the Conquest, domains scattered in every
part of the island. This kind of chequered proprietorship,
still subsisting in the fourteenth century, was noticed by
Froissart : " And several times," he says, giving an
account of a talk with his friend and patron, Edward le
Despenser,! " it happened that when I rode about the
country with him, for the lands and revenues of the
English barons are here and there and much scattered, he
called me and said : ' Froissart, do you see that great
town with the high steeple } "
I Grandson and great-grandson of the two Despensers who had been
executed in 1326 by order of Queen IsabeUa, their estates being confiscated.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 83
Yes, my lord,' I answered, 'Why do you say so ? "
" ' I say so because it should be mine, but there was
a bad queen in this country who took all from us.'
"And thus, on one occasion or another, did he show
me, here and there in England, more than forty such
places." I
The tragic fated Despensers were not alone in having
the lands which they owed to the prince's favour sown
haphazard in every county ; all the great of their rank
were in the same case. The king himself, with all his
court, as well as the landed nobility, ceaselessly went
from one country place to another,^ partly from choice
and partly because they could not do otherwise. In
times of peace it was a semblance of activity that
was not displeasing, but especially it was an economical
necessity. All, however rich, were obliged, like land
owners of every age, to live upon the produce of their
domains, first of one, then of the other, and as they went
from place to place, it was very important for them to
have passable roads, where their horses would not stumble
and where their baggage wagons, which served for
veritable removals, might have a chance of not being
overturned. Military necessity, Scottish wars, French wars, Welsh
or Irish wars had a similar effect, and so had, to a degree,
nowadays incredible, the kings' passion for hawking.
They did not want to be stopped when following their
birds by a broken bridge, and they would order the
commonalty, whether or not it was bound to do so,
to make prompt repairs in view of their, coming. Hence
Article 23 in the Great Charter, meant to check this
I Ed. Simeon Luce, vol. i. p. 257.
2 Royal Itineraries show, for instance, that in the 28th year of his reigUj
Edward I changed seventy-five times, his place of abode, that is about three
times each fortnight. "Liber quotidianus Garderobf," London, 1787,
p. Ixvii.

84 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
propensity : " Let no community or man be constrained
to make bridges on rivers except those who were legally
bound from old to do so." As late, however, as
October 6, 1373, we find that Edward III commanded
" the sheriff of Oxfordshire to declare that all bridges
should be repaired and all fords marked out with stakes
for the crossing of the King ' with his falcons ' during
the approaching winter season." '
In the same way the monks, those vast-landed
husbandmen, were much interested in the proper
maintenance of the roads. Their agricultural under
takings were of considerable extent ; an abbey such as
that of Meaux, near Beverley, had in the middle of the
fourteenth century, 2,638 sheep, 515 oxen, and 98 horses,
with land in proportion. ^ Besides, as we have seen, the
care of watching over the good condition of the roads
was more incumbent on the clergy than on any other
class, because it was a pious and meritorious work.
All these motives combined were enough to provide
roads sufficient for the usual needs, but in those days people
were content with little. Carts and even carriages were
heavy, lumbering, solid machines, which stood the hardest
jolts. People of any worth journeyed on horseback, the use
of a carriage being exceptional. As to those who travelled
on foot, they were used to all sorts of misery. Little then
sufficed ; and if other proofs were wanting of the state
into which the roads were liable to fall, even in the most
frequented places, we should find them in a patent of
Edward III of November 20, 1353, which orders the
paving of the highroad, alta via, running from Temple
Bar to Westminster. This road, being almost a street,
had been paved, but, the king explains, it is " so full
of holes and bogs . . . and the pavement is so damaged
1 McKechnie, "Magna Carta," 1905, p. 357.
^ " Chronica monasteru de Melsa," ed. E. A. Bond ; Rolls Series,
1868, London, vol. iii. preface, p. xv.

ROADS AND BRIDGES 85
and broken," that the traffic has become very dangerous
for men and carts. He orders, in consequence, each land
owner on both sides of the road to remake, at his own
expense, a footway of seven feet up to the ditch, usque
canellum. The middle of the road — inter canellos — the
width of which is unfortunately not given, is to be
paved, and the expense covered by means of a tax laid on
all the merchandise going to the staple at Westminster. ^
Three years later a general tax was laid by the City
of London on all carts and horses bringing merchandise
or materials of any kind to the town. The regulation
which imposed it, of the thirtieth year of Edward III,
first states that all the roads in the immediate environs
of London are in such bad condition that the carriers,
merchants, etc., " are oftentimes in peril of losing what
they bring." Henceforth, to help the reparations, a due
will be levied on all vehicles and all laden beasts coming
to or going from the city ; a penny per cart and a farthing
per horse each way ; reductions were granted in case of
constant traffic : a cart bringing sand, gravel, or clay,
paid only threepence a week. By an article the unfair
ness of which had nothing exceptional, the richer were
made to pay less than the poorer : " But for the carts
and horses of great people and other folks that bring their
own victuals and other goods for the use and consumption
of their own hostels, nothing shall be taken." ^
The environs of Paris about the same time presented
roads and bridges quite as badly kept as those in the neigh
bourhood of London. Charles VI, in one of his ordin
ances, states that the hedges and brambles have greatly
encroached on the roads, and that there are even some
in the midst of which trees have shot up :
I Patent Roll, 27 Edward IH, in Rymer (ed. 1708), vol. v. p. 774.
See as to the repair of this same road in 1 3 14, thirty-nine years earUer,
" Rolls of Parliament," vol. i. p. 302 b.
2 Riley's "Memorials of London," London, 1868, p. 291.

86 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
" Outside the said town of Paris, in several parts of
the suburbs, prevoste and vicomte of the same, there are
many notable and ancient highways, bridges, lanes, and
roads, which are much injured, damaged, or decayed
and otherwise hindered, by ravines of water and great
stones, by hedges, brambles, and many other trees which
have grown there, and by many other supervening hin
drances, because they have not been maintained and
provided for in time past ; and they are in such a
bad state that they cannot be securely used on foot
or horseback, nor by vehicles, without great perils and
inconveniences ; and some of them are entirely aban
doned because men cannot resort there." The Provost
of Paris is ordered to cause the repairs to be made by
all to whom it pertained ; and, if necessary, to compel
by force " all " the inhabitants of the towns in the neigh
bourhood of the bridges and highways to help in the work.^
But what makes us understand better than ordinances
the difficulty of journeys in bad weather, and enables us
to picture to ourselves flooded roads resembling those
of the East in the rainy season, is the impossibility some
times acknowledged in official documents of responding
to the most important royal summons, owing to the in
clemency of the elements. Thus, for example, it might
happen that the bulk of the members called to Parliament
from all parts of England would fail at the appointed
day, for no other reason than bad weather having, as
the event showed, caused the roads to be impassable. The
record of the sittings of the second Parliament of the
thirteenth year of Edward III (1339) show that it was
necessary to declare to the few representatives of the
Commons and of the nobility who had been able to reach
Westminster, " that because the prelates, earls, barons, and
' Ordonance of March I, 1 388, " RecueU d'Isambert," vol. vi. p. 665.
On the state of roads and bridges and on travelling in France, see d'Avenel,
" L'fivolution des Moyens de Transport," Paris, 1919.

" ~,-

ROADS AND BRIDGES 89
other lords and knights of the shires, citizens and burgesses
of cities and boroughs were so troubled by the bad weather
that they could not arrive that day, it would be proper
to await their coming." ^
Yet these members were not poor folks, they had
good horses, good coats, thick cloaks covering their necks
up to their hats, with large hanging sleeves falling over
their knees ; ^ no matter : the snow or the rain, the floods
or the frost, had been the stronger. Battling against the
weather that hampered their journey, prelates, barons,
or knights, halted their steeds at some roadside inn, and
as they listened to the tap of the sleet on the wooden
panels closing the window, with their feet at the fire in
the smoky room while awaiting the subsidence of the
waters, they must have thought on the royal displeasure
which soon, no doubt, would show itself in the " painted
chamber " at Westminster. In short, though there were
roads, though land was burdened with service for their
support, though laws from time to time recalled their
obligations to the owners of the soil, though the private
interest of lords and of monks, in addition to the interest
of the public, gave occasion to reparation now and then,
the fate of the traveller in a snowfall or in a thaw was very
precarious. Well might the Church have pity on him,
and include him, together with the sick and the captive,
among the unfortunates whom she recommended to the
daily prayers of pious souls. 3
I " Rolls of Pariiament," ii. p. 107.
2 See frontispiece of this volume, and p. 14.
3 To give shelter (" tego," I shelter, in the enumeration devised by St.
Thomas Aquinas) was one of the seven " Works of Charity." In the evening
prayers at home, in my childhood, part of which had been handed down
from remote times, travellers were still remembered, as well as those who
had been " bitten by venomous beasts."

!xiif.iut\ivJiimt^if;Pi'-ec-v-iirUf- ff ^Vg'Wttcac.S.utitf-tunKjtJtfta-i^U

A COMMON CART.
[From the MS. lo E. IV. in the British Museum. ^English ; Fourteenth
Century.)

CHAPTER II
THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER AND THE
CASUAL PASSER-BY

THUS kept up, the roads stretched away from the
towns and plunged into the country, interrupted
by rivulets in winter and dotted with holes ;
the heavy carts slowly followed their devious course, and
the sound of creaking wood accompanied the vehicle.
These carts were numerous and in very common use.
Some were square-shaped timbrels, simple massive boxes
made of planks borne on two wheels ; others, somewhat
lighter, were formed of slatts latticed with a willow trellis.
To add to their solidity, the wheels were studded with
big-headed nails.' Both sorts were used for labour in the
I See representations of these carts in the manuscripts of the fourteenth
century, and especially in MS. Roy., lo E. IV, in the British Museum,
fol. 63, 94, no, &c., and in the LoutereU psalter. We give above a fac-
simUe of one of them, and further a representation of a reaper's cart from
the LoutereU psalter. See also Bodl. MS. 264, fos. 42, ' 84, 103, no.
90

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 91
country ; they were to be found everywhere, and as they
abounded their hire was not expensive. Twopence for
carrying a ton weight a distance of one mile was the
average price ; for carrying corn, it was about a penny
a mile per ton.' All this does not prove that the roads
were excellent, but that these carts, indispensable to agri
culture, were numerous. They did not cost much to
the villagers, who usually were the makers thereof ; they
were built solid and massive because they were easier to
set up thus and resisted better the jolts of the roads ; a
modest remuneration would suffice for their owners.
The king always employed a number ; when he moved
from one manor to another, the brilliant cortege of the
lords was followed by an army of loud-creaking borrowed
carts. The official purveyors found the carts wherever they
went and freely appropriated them ; they exercised their
requisitions ten leagues on either side of the road followed
by the royal convoy. They even took without scruple
the carts of travellers who had come perhaps thirty or
forty leagues distance, and whose journey was thus abruptly
interrupted. There were indeed statutes against forced
loans, which specifically provided that suitable payment
should be made, that is to say, " ten pence a day for a
cart with two horses, and fourteen pence for a cart with
three horses." But often no payment came. The " poor
Commons " renewed their protests, the parliament their
statutes, and the purveyors their exactions.
Besides the carts they required corn, hay, oats, beer,
meat ; it was a little army that had ta be fed, and the
requisitions caused the villagers painful apprehension.
People did what they could to be exempted ; the simplest
way was to bribe the purveyor, but the poor could not.
Yet numberless regulations had successively promised
' Thorold Rogers, " History of Agriculture and Prices," i. pp.
650-661.

92 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
that there should never be any further abuse. The king
was powerless ; under an imperfect government, laws
created to last for ever rapidly lose their vitality, and those
made at that time died in a day.
Purveyors swarmed ; impostors gave themselves out
as king's officers who were not, and did not prove the
least greedy. All bought at inadequate prices and limited
themselves to fair promises of payment. The statute of 1 330
shows how these payments never came ; how also when
twenty-five quarters of corn were taken only twenty were
reckoned because they were measured by " the heaped
bushel." I In the same way, for hay, straw, etc., the
purveyors found means to reckon at a halfpenny what
was worth two or three pence ; they ordered that supplies
of wine should be held in readiness for them, kept the
best for themselves in order to sell it again to their own
profit, and exacted payment for returning a part to
the original owners, which was a strange reversal of
things. The king acknowledged all these evils and
decreed reforms accordingly. A little later he did so
again, with no more result. In 1362 he declared that
henceforth the purveyors should pay ready money at
the current market price ; and he gravely added, as an
important guarantee, that the purveyors should lose their
detested name and should be called buyers: "that the
heinous name of purveyor be changed, and named
achatour." •» A word reform, if any.3
The same abuses existed in France, and numerous
ordinances may be read in the pages of Isambert, con
ceived in exactly the same spirit and corresponding to
I " Statutes of the Realm," 4 Edward III, ch. 3 . Eight bushels make
a quarter. [The Act 25 Edward III, stat. 5, ch. 10, a.d. 13 51, provided
that every measure of com should be striken without heap, and that the
royal purveyors should use this measure. Hence the name strike for a
bushel. L. T. S.]
J Statute 36 Edward III, stat. i, ch. 2.
3 See several textj in Appendix V. p. 430.

A reaper's cart GOING UP-HILL.
[From the Louterell Psalter; Fourteenth Century; " Vetusta Monumenta,- vol. vi.)

[P- 93-

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 95
the same complaints ; ordinances of Philip the Fair in
1308, of Louis X in 1342, of Philip VI, who willed that
the " preneurs pour nous " (takers for us), should not
take unless they had " new letters from us," which shows
the existence of false purveyors as in England. John of
France renews all the restrictions of his predecessors,
December 25, 1355, and so on.
The king and his lords journeyed on horseback for
the most part, but they had carriages too. Nothing
gives a better idea of the awkward, cumbersome luxury
which gave its splendour to civil life during this century,
than the structure of these heavy machines. The best
had four wheels, and were drawn by three or four horses,
one behind the other, one of them mounted by a postilion
provided with a short-handled whip of many thongs ;
solid beams rested on the axles, and above this framework
rose an archway rounded like a tunnel ; ' an ungainly
whole. But the details were extremely elegant, the wheels
were carved and their spokes expanded near the hoop
into ribs forming pointed arches ; the beams were painted
and gilded, the inside was hung with those dazzling
tapestries, the glory of the age ; the seats were furnished
with embroidered cushions ; a lady might stretch out
there, half sitting, half lying ; pillows were placed in
the corners as if to invite sleep or meditation, square
windows opened on the sides and were hung with silk
curtains.^ ' A shape in use from the remotest times. Carriages quite similar
to those painted in our mediseval MSS. are to be seen on the alabaster funeral
chests of Etruscan days, for example at the Guamacei Museum, Volterra,
in Italy, where there is an abundance of them, showing the dead, in their
own round-topped, richly ornamented carriage, on their way to the
other world.
' Representations of carriages of this kind are frequent in manuscripts.
Many are to be found, with two wheels and an abundance of ornament
ation, in the romance of King Meliadus (MS. of the fourteenth century
in the British Museum, Add. 12,228, fos. 198, 243). The celebrated four
wheeled carriage of the Louterell psalter, also of fourteenth century, is here

96 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Thus travelled the noble lady, slim in form, tightly
clad in a dress which outlined every curve of the body,
her long slender hands caressing the favourite dog or bird.
The knight, equally tight in his cote-hardie, looked at her
with a complacent eye, and, if he knew good manners,
opened his heart to his nonchalant companion in long
phrases imitated from romances, themselves supposed to
imitate the language of his peers. The broad forehead
of the lady, who has perhaps coquettishly plucked out
some of her hair as well as her eyebrows, a process about
which satirists were bitter, ^ brightens up occasionally,
and her smile is like a ray of sunshine. Meanwhile
the axles groan, the horse-shoes crunch the ground, the
machine advances by fits and starts, descends into the
hollows, bounds all of a piece at the ditches, and comes
down with a heavy thud. The knight must speak pretty
loud to make his dainty discourse, Round Table flavoured,
heard by his companion. So trivial a necessity ever
sufficed to break the charm of the most delicate thought ;
too many shocks shake the flower, and when the knight
presents it, it has lost its perfumed pollen.
The possession of such a carriage was a princely luxury.
They were bequeathed by will from one to another, and
the heirloom was valuable. On September 25, 1355,
Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, wrote her last will and
endowed her eldest daughter with " her great carriage
reproduced. It is drawn by five horses harnessed single file. On the
second sits a postilion with a short whip of several thongs ; on the fifth,
that is, the nearest to the carriage, sits another postilion with a long whip
of the shape in use at the present day.
I La Tour-Landry relates a story of a holy hermit who saw in a dream
his nephew's wife in purgatory. The demons were pushing burning needles
into her eyebrows. An angel told him that it was because she had trimmed
her eyebrows and temples, and increased her forehead, and plucked out
her hair, thinking to beautify herself and to please the world. " Le livre
du ChevaUer de La Tour-Landry," ed. Montaiglon, Paris, 1854. An
English translation of the fifteenth century was published by the Early
English Text Society in 1868.

AN ENGLISH CARRIAGE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
(From the Louterell Psalter.)

IP- 97-

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 99
with the covertures, carpets, and cushions." In the
twentieth year of Richard II Roger Rouland received
;^400 sterling " for making the Queen's chariot " ; and John
le Charer, in the sixth of Edward III, received i^i,ooo for
the carriage of the Lady Eleanor. i These were enormous
sums. In the fourteenth century the average price of an
ox was thirteen shillings, one penny farthing ; of a sheep,
one shilUng and five pence ; of a cow, nine shillings and
five pence ; and a penny for a fowl.^ Lady Eleanor's
carriage thus represented the value of a herd of sixteen
hundred oxen.
Scarcely less ornamented were the horse-litters some
times used by people of rank, especially by ladies. They
were of the same shape as the carriages, being covered
with a sort of rounded vault, in which were cut more or
less large openings. Two horses carried them, one before,
the other behind, each being placed between the shafts
with which the contrivance was provided at both ends. 3
Between these luxurious carriages and the peasants'
carts there was nothing analogous to the multitude of
middle-class conveyances to which we are now accus
tomed ; the middle class itself being as yet but imperfectly
developed. True, there were some not so expensive as
I The king's sister. Devon's " Issues of the Exchequer," 1837, p. 142.
As Englished by Devon, the Latin text referred to would mean that the
receiver of the money and maker of the carriage was Master la Zousche,
but la Zousche was the clerk of the wardrobe, who had the money from
the Exchequer to give it to John le Charer, " per manus John le Charer."
Per has here the meaning oi pro, a use of the word of which several instances
may be found in Du Cange. This indication of Devon's mistake is due
to the late Mr. Bradshaw, of Cambridge.
2 Thorold Rogers, " History of Agriculture and Prices," i. pp. 361—363.
3 Curious representations of such litters are to be found in medieval
manuscripts; for instance, the one here reproduced from the MS. 118
Franfais, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, fol. 285, where two persons
are to be seen using the litter, a lady and a wounded knight (Romance of
Lancelot, fourteenth century) ; or in the MS. Roy, 18 E. II, in the British
Museum, fol. 7 (Chronicles of Froissart).

100

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

those belonging to the princesses of Edward's Court,
but not many. Every one at this time knew how to ride
on horseback, and it was much more practical to use
one's mount than the heavy vehicles of the period.
One went much faster, and was more certain to arrive.
" The Paston Letters " show that matters had changed
little in the fifteenth century. John Paston being ill

P
^^'B^

A YOUNG SQUIRE (cHAUCER'S SQUIRE) TRAVELLING ON HORSEBACK.
{From the EUesmere MS.)
in London, his wife wrote asking him to return as
soon as he could bear the horse-ride ; the idea of re
turning in a carriage did not even occur to them. Yet
it was a serious case, " a grete dysese."
Margaret Paston writes on September 28, 1443, " If
I might have had my will, I should have seen you ere this
time ; I would ye were at home, if it were your ease, and
your sore might be as well looked to here as it is where

tcmur CU C0tisiiVfti*J^djmmihtf lUiuxv dcgvmi
MmtB pinics qnuatwitou cot^B et eit iattOt
octpr Oiitu pmr, ci: cmr aaulht^ix: a), jnumi.

fcWu^M'r'Migi^ I'J .n(w»M

V,-"

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^

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>/f J* .Mam

hum Oil mmi^ qmiieptus mii^t^
^etm^((^gmmm%t la ^ntouXHk G^ <
^ixUismm'twwiv^ tit- iMfa tmt Cm 6mxi\

TR.WELLING IN A HORSE LITTER.

{p. IOI.

[hyom the MS. ii8 Frangais, in the Bibliothique Nationale, late Fourteenth
Century.)

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 103
ye be, now liefer than a gown though it were of scarlet.
I pray you if your sore be whole, and so that ye may endure
to ride, when my father comes to London, that ye will
ask leave, and come home, when the horse shall be sent
home again, for I hope ye should be kept as tenderly here
as ye be at London." '
Women were accustomed to riding almost as much
as men, and when they had to travel they usually did it
on horseback. A peculiarity of their horsemanship, which
we have seen of late becoming again the fashion after a
lapse of five centuries, was that they habitually rode astride.
The custom of riding sideways did not spread in England
before th-e latter part of the fourteenth century, and even
then it was not general. In the invaluable manuscript
of the Decretals in the British Museum,^ ladies on horse
back are constantly represented, always riding astride.
At one place 3 horses are shown being brought for a knight
and a lady ; both saddles are exactly the same ; each
have tall backs, so as to form a sort of comfortable chair.
The numerous ivories of the fourteenth century in the
Victoria and Albert Museum and in the British Museum
often represent a lady and her lover, both on horseback,
and hawking. In almost all cases the lady unmistakably
rides astride. Both ways of riding are shown in the
fifteenth-century illuminations in the EUesmere manu
script of Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales." The wife of
Bath rides astride, with large spurs ;• the prioress sits
sideways. II
There were few places in England where the sight
of the royal train was not familiar. For the motives
' "Paston Letters," 1422-1509, edited by Jas. Gairdner, 1872,
vol. i. p. 49 ; spelling modernized.
2 Roy. 10 E. IV. 3 Fol. 310.

104 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
mentioned above, the Court's journeys were incessant.
The royal itineraries that have come down to us throw
a flood of light on this continual need of movement. The
itinerary of King John shows that he rarely passed a month
in the same place, most frequently he did not even remain
there a week. Within a fortnight he is often found at
five or six different towns or castles. ^ The same with
Edward I, who, as we have seen, would change his
abode three times every fortnight.^
And when the king moved, not only was he preceded
by twenty-four archers in his pay, receiving threepence
a day, 3 but he was accompanied by all those officers whom
the author of " Fleta " enumerates with so much com
placency. The sovereign took with him his two marshals,
his outer marshal (^forinsecus') who in time of war
disposed the armies for battle, selected the halting-places
on his journeys, and at all times arrested malefactors found
in the virgata regia, that is to say, within twelve leagues
around his dwelling ; t and his inner marshal {intrinsecus),
who guarded the palace and castles, and cleared them
as much as possible of courtesans. He collected from
every common harlot {meretrice communt) four pence by
way of fine the first time that he arrested her ; if she
returned she was brought before the steward, who solemnly
forbid her ever to present herself at the dwelling of the
king, queen, or their children ; the third time she was
imprisoned and the tresses of her hair were shorn off ;
I " A Description of the Patent RoUs . . to which is added an
Itinerary of King John," by T. Duffus Hardy, London, 1835.
' 1299— 1300. "Liber quotidianus Garderobje," Society of An
tiquaries, London, 1787, p. 67.
3 " Archers. And xxiiij archers on foote for garde of the kinge's body,
who shaU goe before the kinge as he travaleth thorough the cuntry " (" King
Edward II's . . . Ordinances," 1323, ed. FurnivaU, p. 46).
4 " Fleta, seu commentarius juris Anglicani, editio secunda," London
1685, lib. ii. cap. 2, 4. This treatise is believed to have been composed
in the Fleet prison by a lawyer in the time of Edward I. It is later than
1292, for mention is made ih it of the submission of Scotland.

A WOMAN RIDING ASTRIDE (CHAUCER'S WIFE OF HATIl)
[From the EUesmere MS.)

A LADY RIDING SIDEWAYS (cIIAUCEr's PRIORESs).
[From the EUesmere MS.)

[p. 105.

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 107
the fourth time one of those hideous punishments was
resorted to which the Middle Ages in their brutality
tolerated ; the upper lip of these women was cut off,
" ne de caetero concupiscantur ad libidinem." ' There
was also the chamberlain, who took care that the interior
of the house was comfortable: " He has to arrange decently
for the king's bed, and to see that the rooms be furnished
with carpets and benches ; " the treasurer of the wardrobe,
who kept the accounts ; the marshal of the hall, whose
mission it was to eject unworthy intruders and dogs, —
" non enim permittat canes aulam ingredi," — and a crowd
of other officers. ^
Overtopping all the rest, there was, moreover, the
king's seneschal or steward, first officer of his house
hold, and his great justiciary. Wherever the king went
the apparatus of justice was transported with him ; when
he was about to start the steward gave to the sheriff notice
of the place where the Court would stop, in order that he
might bring his prisoners to the town where the prince
was to be stationed.3 All the cases amenable to the juris
diction of the justices in eyre were then determined by
the steward, as the king's justiciary, who prescribed, if
necessary, the judicial duel, pronounced sentences of
outlawry, and judged in criminal and civil cases. 4 This
' Lib. ii; cap. 5. The ordinance of Edward II mentioned further,
p. no, speaks only of the brand by a hot iron on the forehead. " King
Edward II's Household and Wardrobe Ordinances," a.d. 1323, Chaucer
Society, ed. FurnivaU, 1876.
2 Lib. ii. cap. 14, 15.
3 He sent a mandatum to this effect, and he withdrew it when the
king changed his mind as to the place where he wished to go, which hap
pened often enough. " Debet autem senescallus nomine capitalis justitiarii
cujus vices gerit mandare vicecomiti loci ubi dominus rex fuerit declinaturus,
quod venire facial ad certum diem, ubicumque tunc rex fuerit in ballivia
sua, omnes assisas comitatus sui et omnes prisones cum suis atachiamentis."
" Fleta," Ub. ii. cap. 3, § 4.
t " Habet etiam ex virtute officn sui potestatem procedendi ad utlaga-
tiones et duella jungendi et singula faciendi quE ad justitiarios itinerantes,
prout supra dictum est pertinent faciendi." " Fleta," Ub. ii. cap. 3, ^j n.

io8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
right of criminal justice even accompanied the king abroad,
but he only exercised it when the criminal had been arrested
in his own royal place of abode. One such case happened
in the fourteenth year of the reign of Edward I. This
sovereign being at Paris, Ingelram de Nogent came into
his house to steal, and was caught in the act. After some
discussion it was acknowledged that Edward, by his royal
privilege, should remain judge in the matter ; he delivered
the robber over to Robert Fitz-John, his steward, who
caused Ingelram to be hung from the gibbet of St. Germain-
des-Pres.i For a long time the chancellor himself, and the clerks
who made out the writs, followed the king on his journeys,
and Palgrave notes that frequently a strong horse was
requisitioned from the nearest convent to carry the rolls ; ^
but this custom came to a close in the fourth year of
Edward III, when the Chancery was permanently estab
lished at Westminster.
The tribunal moving on, a crowd of suitors moved
with it. No matter though they were not inscribed on
the rolls, they followed without losing patience, as gulls
follow the ship, hoping that something may come their
way. Parties with a lawsuit, petitioners of every kind,
women " of ill life " {de fole vie), a whole herd of indi
viduals with no one to vouch for them, persisted in escort
ing the prince and his courtiers. They quarrelled among
each other, robbed by the way, sometimes committed
murders, and, as may be imagined, did not contribute to
render the news of the king's arrival welcome to his subjects.
In the ordinances of his household, Edward II enumer
ates and deplores all these abuses ; he orders that master-
less men who follow the Court shall be put in irons for
forty days on bread and water, and that the women of
ill life shall be likewise imprisoned and branded with a
I " Fleta," Ub. n. cap. 3, § 9.
' "Original authority of the King's Council," p. 115.

A FAMILY DINNER AMONG THE GREAT, WITH DOGS, MUSICIANS, CARVER, CUPBEARER, MARSHAL OF
THE HALL (EXPELLING A LAZAR).
{From the MS. Addit. 28162 in the British Museum. Fourteenth Century.) J/.. 109.

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER iii
hot iron ; he forbids his knights, clerks, squires, valets,
grooms, in short, all who accompany him, to bring their
wives with them, unless these have any post or employ
ment at Court, this host of feminine beings increasing
the chances of trouble. He also limits the number of
persons who should accompany the marshal, which had,
as will happen, increased little by little beyond all bounds.
His ordinances, like so many others in the Middle Ages,
were conspicuous for their wisdom, their minuteness, and
their prompt decay.
Justice did not travel only in the king's suite. She
was peripatetic in England, visiting the counties in the
company of the royal itinerant judges and going from
hundred to hundred with that governor, military chief,
police magistrate, financial agent, the sheriff, a functionary
of great local, and sometimes tyrannical, power, appointed
and dismissed at will by the king during certain periods,
elected at others.
Both kinds, at fixed times, were on the move and caused
a considerable portion of the inhabitants to leave their
work, take to the road and be on the move too, in order
to come to the court that was to be held. Both kinds put
before the jurors a number of questions which the twelve
men had to answer under oath, some of those questions
being obviously quite uncomfortable to reply to.
The sheriff goes about the hundreds ' in his shire
and holds the " view of frank pledge," chiefly established
for the maintenance of that ancient system of enforced
solidarity which obliged, theoretically at least, every male
' " The county is divided into hundreds or into wapentakes or into
wards, the term wapentake appearing in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Derby
shire, Nottinghamshire, the term ward in the northernmost counties."
(" History of English Law before Edward I," by Sir Frederick Pollock
and F. W. Maitland, Cambridge, 2 vols., 1895, vol. i. p. 543.) At the
head of the hundred was the baUiff, appointed by the sheriff, acting under
him, and giving also rise to numerous complaintSi Se?) e.g. " RoUs of
Parljainept," ii, ^57, a petition of 1 3761

112 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
to belong to a particular group of inhabitants of ten or
more (tithing), jointly responsible for the misdeeds of any
of their number in case the culprit cannot be found,
fined, jailed or hanged, according to the occasion. By
degrees the old " articles of the view," greatly varying
from place to place,' had increased in number, and the
jurors had to answer as to a variety of smaller offences
often duplicating the justices' own interrogatories. ^
The " turns " or " tourns " of the sheriffs might,
according to the Great Charter, only take place twice a
year, not oftener, because their coming occasioned loss
of time and money to the sworn men and others who had
to leave home and attend the court, and to the king's
subjects at whose houses these officers and their train went
to lodge. 3 In spite of institutions which, as we shall
see, had made the very men placed under the jurisdic
tion of the sheriffs, bailiffs, etc. themselves the censors
of these same officials, abuses were numerous, the Commons
were ever complaining, and frequent statutes, one after
the other, denounced corrupt practices and stopped them
— for a time. 4
' The lists which have reached us " leave us doubting whether any
of them had received a solemn sanction from the central power." Same
" History of English Law," ii. 508. On the origin, growth, decay, uses
and abuses of the institution, see W. A. Morris, " The Frankpledge System,"
London, 1910.
2 In many places great people, lay or ecclesiastic, had somehow secured
for themselves the properly royal privilege of holding the " view " ; it
became attached to some manors and was conveyed with them. See the
petition of an abbess who claims the view of frankpledge attached to the
manor of Shorwalle, Isle of Wight, which had been given her ; Isabella
de Forte disputes her this right, the real object of the quarrel between the
two ladies being the fines levied when the view was held.
Towards the end of the fourteenth century the frankpledge had fallen
into decay.
3 " Magna Carta," cap. 42 of the second confirmation by Henry III
.(1217) ; Stubbs' " Select Charters," p. 337. " Nee Uceat alicui vicecomiti
vel ballivo tenere turnum suum per hundredum nisi bis per annum ; " " Fleta,"
Lib. n. cap. 52.
^ See Appendix VI, p. 431.

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 113
The itinerant justices' inquiry covered a much larger
field ; their " Articles of the Eyre," or Capitula Itineris,
included every imaginable misdeed from highest to lowest,
from " crimen laesae Majestatis," above which nothing
could be imagined, to fishing by means of " kidels "
(weirs) or the using of nets to capture pigeons without
the owner's permit.
Coming four times a year in accordance with Art. 18
of the Great Charter, sitting in the full court of the county,
growing in importance, while that of the sheriff as a judge
went diminishing and the system of the frankpledge was
falling into disuse, the itinerant justices submitted to the
jury a ceaselessly increasing number of questions, a whole
quire of them in the first half of the fourteenth century.'
They asked what crimes, what misdemeanours, what
infractions against the statutes had com'e to their know
ledge. And in these minute interrogatories at every
moment came up the names of the sheriff, the coroner,^
the bailiff, the constable, of all the royal functionaries,
whose conduct was thus placed under popular control.
Has any of these officers, says the judge, released some
robber, or counterfeiter or a clipper of coin ^ Has he
for any consideration neglected the pursuit against a vaga
bond or an assassin } Has he unjustly received fines }
Has he been paid by men who wished to avoid a public
charge (for example, of being sworn as member of a jury) }
Has the sheriff claimed more than reasonable hospitality
from those in his jurisdiction, in tourns held too oft ^
Has he come with more than five or six horses } And
' " The articles for the London eyre of 1 244 are in ' Munimenta Gild-
hallas,' i. 79 ; those for the eyre of 1 321 are in ' Munim. Gild.,' ii. 347.
The latter are fully seven times as long as the former and fill fifteen octavo
pages." Pollock and Maitland, " History of EngUsh Law," ii. 519 ; cf
" Fleta," i. cap. 19 and 20 : " De Processu coram Justiciariis itinerantibus —
De capitulis Coronas et Itineris."
2 Originally, custos placitorum corona, record keeper of the pleas of
the Crown. 8

114 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
the juror was obliged in the same way to denounce,
under his oath, the great who had arbitrarily imprisoned
travellers passing through their lands, and all those who
had neglected to assist in arresting a thief and running with
the " hue and cry ; " ' for in this society each man is
by turns peace officer, soldier, and judge, and even the
humbler ones, menaced by so many exactions, have their
share too in the administration of justice and the mainten
ance of public order. Highly important were, therefore,
from a social point of view, these judicial tourns, which
periodically reminded the mere man that he was a citizen,
and that the affairs of the State were also his affairs. ^
Juries could at times, like so many other picturesque
groups of inhabitants, become one of the sights of the road.
If they perjured themselves or accepted bribes, they would
be sent to London and be jailed in the Tower ; they were
to travel along, not by night, but " by clear day, in the
view of all, so that the country people might see the pain
and shame of those guilty men who will be thereby the
better punished." 3
Or else, if that unanimity which became obligatory
in the latter part of the fourteenth century had not been
secured, the itinerant justices, in order to get it any way,
I In existence also in France and Germany from the earliest times,
thus defined in the " Grand Coutumier de Normandie," chap. 54 : " II
ne doit etre crie fors pour cause criminelle, si comme pour feu et pour larcin
ou pour homicide ou pour aulre evident peril, si comme si aucun court
sus a un autre le couteau trait. Car cil qui crie haro sans apert (obvious)
peril le doit amender au prince . . . A ce cri doivent isser tous ceux qui
I'ont oui." This custom remained in use in Normandy until the French
Revolution. Glasson, " Ongir.es de la clameur de haro," Paris, 1882.
In England the statutes concerning the " hue and cry " were repealed only
in 1827. » "Fleta," Ub. i. cap. 19, 20. See also "Local Self-Government-
and CentraUzation," by Toulmin Smith, 1848, pp. 220-232, 298.
3 " Mais de cler jour, a la veue de toutz, issint qe gentz de pays puissent
veer la peine et la hounte que les ditz atteintz ount, et par tant en soient les
meuz chastiez." Year, probably, 33 Ed. I; Palgrave, " Original Authority
of the King's CouncU," p. 56.

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 115
were free to place the twelve men in carts and carry them
about wherever they went, until the twelve chose to agree.'
When monks came out of the cloister and travelled,
they wilfully modified their costume, and it became diffi
cult to distinguish them from the great. I saw, writes
Chaucer :
" I saugh his sieves purfiled atte hond
With grys, and that the fynest of a lond.
And for to festne his hood undur his chyn
He hadde of gold y-wrought a curious pyn,
A love-knotte in the gretter end ther was." ^
But the councils are still more explicit, and do more
than justify the satire of the poet. Thus the Council of
London in 1342, reproaches the religious with wearing
clothing " fit rather for knights than for clerks, that is
to say short, very tight, with excessively wide sleeves,
not reaching the elbows, but hanging down very low,
lined with fur or with silk." They made themselves
conspicuous by their long beards, rings on their fingers,
costly girdles, purses or bags whereon figures were em
broidered in gold, knives resembling swords, boots red
or party-coloured, or slashed long-pointed shoes (the Polish-
born poulaine) ; in a word, all the luxury of the
magnates of the land. Later, in 1367, the Council of
York renewed the same criticisms ; the religious have
" ridiculously short " clothing ; they dare publicly to
wear those coats " which do not come down to the middle
of the legs, and do not even cover the knees." Severe
prohibitions were made for the future, though on a journey
tunics shorter than the regulation gown were tolerated. 3
A bishop did not start on a journey without a great
train ; and the bishops, besides their episcopal visitations,
' Reeves, " History of English Law," ed. Finlason, ii. p. 408.
2 Prologue to the " Canterbury Tales ; " The Monk.
3 See Appendix VII, p. 432.

ii6 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
had, like the nobility, to travel to visit their lands and to
live on them. On all these occasions they took with them
their servants of different kinds and their followers, as
the king did his court. The accounts of the expenses
of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, give an idea
of the lordly life led by well-to-do prelates. He was a
bishop of some importance, and rich in proportion ; many
manors belonged to his bishopric ; he could hold his

A COOK ON A JOURNEY (CHAUCER's COOK).
[From the EUesmere MS.)
rank as prelate and as lord, be hospitable, charitable to
the poor, and spend much on requests and suits at the
court of Rome and elsewhere. He had constantly in
his pay about forty persons of different ranks, the greater
part of whom accompanied him in his numerous changes
of residence. His squires (armigeri) had from a mark
(13s. 4d.) to a pound a year ; his valleti, that is, the clerks
of his chapel and others, his carters, porters, falconers,
grooms, messengers, etc., had from a crown to eight

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 117
shillings and eightpence. In the third category came the
kitchen servants, the baker, with two to four shillings a
year ; in the fourth, that of the boys or pages who helped
the other servants, and whose wages greatly varied, being
from one to six shillings a year. All the household was
dressed alike, in striped cloth {pannus stragulatus), supplied
by the bishop, besides the fixed salary. One of the most
peculiar retainers of the bishop belonged to a now extinct
race, and was his champion, Thomas de Bruges, who
received an annual payment to fight in the prelate's name
in case any lawsuit should have to be terminated by a
judicial duel.' Ill
At eventide, monks, great men, and travellers of all
degree sought shelter for the .night. When the king,
preceded by his twenty-four archers, and escorted by his
lords and the officers of his household, was expected in
a town, the marshal selected a certain number of the best
houses, which were marked with chalk. The chamber
lain asked the inhabitants to make room, and the
Court settled as well as it could in the lodgings.
Even the capital was not exempt from the annoyance
of this burden ; the marshal had, however, to come
' " Household Expenses of Richard de Swinfield," ed. J. Webb, 1854,
Camden Society, vols. i. p. 125, ii. pp. xxx-xxxvi. The duels of Thomas
de Bruges were not those of the cases of felony and crime which resulted
in the death of the vanquished; it was merely the duel with staff and shield,
cum Juste et scuto, which required, as may be imagined, the replacement
of the champion much less frequently. In the twenty-ninth year of Edward
III, a duel took place by means of champions between the Bishop of Salis
bury and the Earl of Salisbury. When the judges, conformably to the
laws, came to examine the dress of the combatants, they found that the
bishop's champion had several sheets of prayers and incantations sown in
his garments ("Year Books of Edward I," iRoUs Series, 3 2-3 3d year, preface,
p. xvi, note). This examination of the clothing was always made with the
intention of discovering frauds of this kind,, which were considered as the
fnost dangerous and disloyal of al}.

ii8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
there to an understanding with the mayor, sheriffs, and
city officers for the selection of the habitations. Some
times the royal agent chose to forget this wise proviso,
and trouble followed. In the nineteenth year of Edward II,
that prince having come to the Tower, the people of his
household quartered themselves on the citizens without
the mayor and aldermen having been consulted ; the
very sheriff's house was marked with chalk. Great was
the wrath of this officer when he found Richard de Ayre-
mynne, the king's own secretary, established in his house,
the stranger's horses in his stable, his servants in the
kitchen. Undaunted by the thought of a royal secretary's
importance, the sheriff, counting on the privilege of the
city, drove out the secretary and his suite by force, rubbed
off the marks of the chalk, and became once more master
of his own abode. Cited to appear before the Court
steward, and accused of having contemned the king's orders
to the extent of at least ;^i,ooo, he stoutly defended him
self, and appealed in defence to the mayor and citizens,
who produced the charters of the city privileges. The
charters were clear, their purport could not be denied ;
the sheriff's boldness was excused ; Ayremynne consoled
himself as best he could, and did not receive any indemnity.'
In the country, if the king did not happen to be within
easy reach of one of his own or his lieges' castles, he often
went to lodge at the neighbouring monastery, sure of
being received there as master. The great on their journeys
did their best to imitate the prince in this respect.^ In

' See Riley's " Liber Albus," p. 303, where the case is entered in fuU.
* One has only to peruse Froissart to notice the extreme frequency of
this custom. Jean de Hainaut arrives at Denain : " There he lodged in
the abbey that night " (Ub. i. part i. ch. 14) ; the queen disembarks in
England with the same Jean de Hainaut, " and then they found a great
abbey of black monks which is called St. Aymon, and they were harboured
there and refreshed for three days " (ch. 18); " there the king stopped
and lodged in an abbey " (ch. 292) ; " King PhiUppe came to the good
tpw;i of AmJens, apd therp lodged in the abbe^ of Gard " (ch. 296), etc,

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 119
the convents hospitality was a religious duty ; for the
order of St. John of Jerusalem the first of duties. This
order had establishments all over England, and it was
a piece of good fortune for the poor traveller to come to
one of them. No doubt he was treated there according
to his rank, but it was much not to find the door closed.
The accounts of the year 1338,' show that these knight-
monks did not seek at all to avoid the heavy burden of hospi
tality ; in their lists of expenditure are always to be found
charges occasioned by supervenientibus (strangers). When
it was an affair of kings or princes, they outdid them
selves ; thus the Prior of Clerkenwell mentions " much
expenditure which cannot be given in detail, caused by
the hospitality offered to strangers, members of the royal
family, and to other grandees of the realm who stay at
Clerkenwell and remain there at the cost of the house."
In consequence, the account closes with this sad summing
up : " Thus the expenditure exceeds the receipts by
twenty-one pounds, eleven shillings and fourpence." The
mere proximity of a great man was a source of expense,
for, even if he did not go himself, he would send his suit
to profit of the hospitality of the convent. In the accounts
for Hampton, the list of people to whom beer and bread
have been furnished ends by these words : " because the
Duke of Cornwall is staying in the vicinity." '
It should be noted that most of these houses had been
endowed by the nobles, and each one, recognizing his
own land or that of a relative, a friend, or an ancestor,
' " The Knights Hospitallers in England,!' edited by Larking and
Kemble, Camden Society, 1857. It is the text of a manuscript found at
Malta entitled, " Extenta terrarum et tenementorum Hospitalis Sancti
Johannis Jerusalem in Anglia, a.d. 1338."
^ " Knights Hospitallers," pp. 99, loi, 127. The effect of the Scot
tish wars on the possessions of the Knights is strikingly set forth : " Omnes
possessiones hospitalis in Scocia sunt destructa, combusta per fortem guerram
ibidem per multos annos continuatam unde nil his diebus potest levari.
Spleb^t t^men, tempore pacis, reddere per annum, cc marcas" (p. 129).

120 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
felt himself at home in the monastery. But these turbulent
lords, friends of good cheer, abused of the monks' grati
tude, and their excesses caused complaints which came
to the ears of the king.' Edward I forbade any one to
venture to eat or lodge in a religious house, unless the
superior had explicitly invited him, or he were the
founder of the establishment, and even then his consump
tion should be moderate. The poor only, who more than
any one lost by the excesses of the great, might continue
to be lodged for nothing : " The king intendeth not that
the grace of hospitality should be withdrawn from the
destitute." ^ Edward II, in 1309, confirmed these rules,
which had apparently fallen into abeyance, and promised
again, six years later, that neither he nor his family would
make inordinate use of the hospitality of the monks. 3
All in vain ; these abuses were already comprised
among those which the Articles of the Eyre had for their
object to discover, but failed to suppress. Periodically
the magistrate came to question the country folk on the
subject. Have " any lords or others gone to lodge in
religious houses without being invited by the superiors,
or gone at their own expense, against the will of the same } "
Have any been so bold as to " send to the houses or mansions
belonging to the monks or others, men, horses, or dogs
to sojourn there at an expense not their own } " The
application of these rules did not go without difficulty
or even danger, for the magistrate questioned also the
jury about " any who may have taken revenge for refusal
of food or lodging." 4
The Commons in parliament, mindful as they were
in such matters of the fate of the poorest, were not un
mindful of their own, and took steps to prevent, in a
general way and without reference to the impecunious,
' See Appendix VIII. p. 433. ^ Statute 3 Edward I, cap. i.
3 Statute 9 Edward II, cap. n, Articuli Cieri, a.d. 131 5-1 31 6,
4 "Fleta," lib. i. cap. 20,^68, 72,

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 121
the falling into disuse of monachal hospitality. The non-
residence of the clergy, which was to be one of the causes
of the Reformation two hundred years later, occasioned
bitter protests during the fourteenth century. The Com
mons object especially because from this abuse there
results a decay of the duties of hospitality. " And that all
other persons advanced to the benefices of Holy Church,"
they request of the king, " should remain on their said
benefices in order to keep hospitality there, on the same
penalty, exception made for the king's clerks and the
clerks of the great of the realm." ' Parliament protests
also against the bestowal by the pope of rich priories
on foreigners who remain abroad. These foreigners
" suffer the noble edifices built of old time when they were
occupied by the English to fall quite to ruin," and neglect
" to keep hospitality." ^
Only people of high rank were admitted into the
monastery proper. The mass of travellers, pilgrims and
others, were housed and fed in the guest-house, a building
made on purpose to receive passers-by ; it usually stood
by itself, and was even, sometimes, erected outside the
precincts of the monastery. Such, for instance, was the
case in Battle Abbey, where the guest-house is still to be
seen outside the large entrance gate. These edifices
commonly consisted of a hall with doors opening on each
side into sleeping rooms. People slept also in the hall ;
old inventories, for instance the one concerning the
Maison-Dieu or hospital at Dover, show that beds were
set up in the hall and remained, it seems, permanently
there.3 ' " Rolls of Parliam.ent," Ui. p. 501, a.d. 1402.
2 Ibid., iU. p. 82, A.D. 1379-80. The clergy, on the other hand,
complain that the sheriffs sometimes come " with their wives and other
excessive number of people on horseback as well as on foot," to stay in
monasteries, under pretext of collecting monies for the king. Ibid. p. 26,
A.D. 1377.
3 " Inventories of St. Mary's Hospital, or Maison Dieu, Dover," by
M. E. C. Walcott, " ArchjBologia Cantiana," London, 1869.

122 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
It is hardly necessary to recall that hospitality was
also exercised in castles ; noblemen who were not at feud
willingly received one another ; there were much stricter
ties of brotherhood among them than now exist among
people of the same class. We do not often now give
lodging to unknown persons who knock at the door ; at
the most, and but rarely, do we permit a poor man passing
along in the country to sleep for a night in our hay-loft.
In the Middle Ages, men received their equals, not by
way of simple charity, but as a habit of courtesy and also
for pleasure. Known or unknown, the travelling knight
was rarely refused the door of a country manor. His
coming in time of peace was a happy diversion from the
monotony of the days. There was in every house the
hall, or large room where the meals were taken in common ;
the new-comer ate with the lord at a table placed on a
raised platform called the dais, erected at one end of the
room ; his followers were at the lower tables disposed
along the side walls. Supper finished, all soon retired
to rest, people went to bed and rose early in those days.
The traveller withdrew sometimes into a special room
for guests, if the house were large ; sometimes into that
of the master himself, the solar (room on the first storey),
and spent the night there with him. Meanwhile, in the
hall, the lower tables were taken out, for in general these
were not standing, but movable ; ' mattresses were placed
on the ground over the litter of rushes which day and
night covered the pavement, and the people of the house
hold, the suite of the traveller, the strangers of less im-
' " Menss de medio removentur," or, in the English version by S.
Bateman, of 1582, foL 81, "when they have eaten, boord, clothes, and
reliefe bee borne awaye " — description of a dinner in England, by Bar
tholomew the Englishman (de Glanville), 13th century. " Bartholomi
Anglici de proprietatibus rerum," Frankfort, 1609, lib. vi. cap. 32. Smollett,
in the eighteenth century, notes the existence of similar customs in Scotland ;
people dine, then sleep in the hall, where mattresses are stretched, replacing
fhe tables (" Humphrey Clinker ").

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 123
portance, stretched themselves out there till morning.
Such a litter of herbs or rushes was in constant use, and
was to be found in the king's palace as well as in the houses
of mere merchants in the city : it was spread in lieu of
a carpet, to keep the room warm and to give a feeling
of comfort. It is still to be met with, and this is, appar
ently, the last place where it has found refuge, in old-
fashioned French provincial diligences ; the straw in
English country omnibuses is also its lineal descendant.
So it was at least when, in pre-automobile times, these
lines were originally written.
Prices paid for the purchase of rushes constantly recur
in the accounts of the royal expenses.' They were so
largely used in towns as well as in the country, that people
in cities did not know what to do with the soiled ones,
and the local authorities had to interfere over and over
again, especially in London, where the inhabitants were
apt to throw them into the Thames, with the result of
greatly damaging and polluting the water.
Through a window opened in the partition between
his room and the hall, over the dais, the lord could see
and even hear all that was done or said below. In the
king's house itself the hall was used for sleeping as is shown
by the ordinances of Edward IV ; ' at a period much
nearer our day (15 14), Barclay still complains that at
Court the same couch serves for two :
And never in the court shalt thou have bed alon?,
and that the noise from the comers and goers, from brawlers,
' " HaU and chamber, for litter, 2od. ; hall and chamber, for rushes,
l6d. ; hall, &c., for Utter, id., &c." Extracts from the " Rotulus famUias,"
18 Ed. I, " Archaeologia," vol. xv. p. 350. The king was then at Langley
Castle, Buckinghamshire.
^ Turner and Parker, " Domestic Architecture in England, from Ed
ward I to Richard II," Oxford, 1853, p. 75. See also in " Archasologia^"
yi. p. 366, thg illustrated description of the rova} JjaJ] at Eltham,

124 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
coughers, and chatterers never ceases, and prevents sleep.'
At the first streak of dawn, sending through the white or
coloured panes of the high windows shafts of light on
the dark carved timber-work, which, high above the pave
ment, supported the roof, all stirred on their couches ;
soon they were out of doors, horses were saddled, and the
clatter of hoofs sounded anew on the highway.
Towards the latter part of the fourteenth century a
change became noticeable in the use of the hall. It was
first pointed out by that acute observer of manners, William
Langland, the author of the " Visions." Life was be
coming, by degrees, less patriarchal and more private ;
people were less fond of dining almost publicly in their
halls. Well-to-do individuals began to prefer having their
meals by themselves in rooms with chimneys, which last
particular Langland is careful to note as a sign of the
growing luxuriousness of the times. " Elyng " (dull,
silent) " is the hall," he said, in a well-known passage :
" There the lorde ne the lady • liketh noughte to sytte.
Now hathe uche riche a reule • to eten bi hym-selve
In a prive parloure • for pore mennes sake.
Or in a chambre with a chymneye • and leve the chief halle.
That was made for meles ¦ men to eten inne." ^
Less and less inhabited, the hall gradually became little
more than a sort of thoroughfare leading to the rooms
where people were living a life more private than before.
It decreased in size as well as in importance, until it was
nothing in ordinary houses but the vestibule which we
now see.
It must have been chiefly to the very poor, or the
very rich or powerful that the monastery served as a
hostelry, Monks received the former out of charity,
' Eclogue III in the edition of the " Cytezen and Vplondyshman,"
published by the Percy Society, 1847, p. Ii.
2 " The Vision concerning PiefS the Plowman^" ed. Skeat, Text B,
passus Xl line 96.

THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER 125
and the latter out of necessity, the common inns being
at once too dear for the one and too miserable for the
other. They were intended for the middle class : mer
chants, small landowners, itinerant packmen, etc. A
certain number of beds were placed in one room, and
a certain number of men in each bed, usually two, but
sometimes three, the latter number being in any case
frequent in Germany, according to Chaucer's friend,
Eustache Des Champs, sent to those parts as " ambassador
and messenger " by the French king : " No one lies
apart, but two and two in a dark room, or oftener three
and three, in the same bed as it chances." He regrets
the better manners and more refined customs of his own
country, " doux pays, terre tres honorable." '
Travellers bought separately their food and drink,
chiefly bread, a little meat, and beer. Complaints as to
excessive prices were not less frequent than now. The
innkeeper's extortions were supplemented by those of his
assistants. Chaucer's good parson, branding those men
who encourage the evil practices of their subordinates,
does not forget " thilke that holden hostelries," and who
" sustenen the theft of hir hostilers (ostlers)." ^ The
people petitioned parliament and the king interfered
accordingly with his wonted useless good will. Edward III
promulgated, in the 23 rd year of his reign, a statute to
constrain " hostelers et herbergers " to sell food at reason
able prices ; and again, four years later, tried to put an
end to the " great and outrageous cost of victuals kept
up in all the realm by inn-keepers and other retailers of

' "Chascuns ne gist mie a part soy,
Mais deux et deux en chambre obscure,
Ou le plus souvent troy et troy.
Eh un seul lit a I'aventure,"
with fleas as big as those of the monks of Citeaux. " CEuvres Completes,''
fed. de Queux de St. Hilaire, vol vU. pp. 79, 117.
» "Works," Skeat, iv, 595-

126

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

victuals, to the great detriment of the people travelling
through the realm." '
To have an example of ordinary travelling, we may
follow the warden and two fellows of Merton College,
who went with four servants from Oxford to Durham
and Newcastle in 1331.^ They travelled on horseback ;
it was in the dead of winter. Their food was very simple
and their lodging inexpensive, the same items constantly
recur ; they comprise, on account of the season, candles
and fire, sometimes a coal fire. One of their days may
give an idea of the rest : for a Sunday spent at Alreton
they write down :

.Bread Beer.
Wine Meat
Potage

4d. 2d.
lid. id.

Candles .
Fuel . . .
Beds . . .
Fodder for Horses

id. 2d.2d.
lod.

Beds, we see, were not expensive ; our men did not
spend more for them than for their beer. Another time,
the servants alone are at the inn, and the sleeping of the
four comes to a penny for two nights. Generally, when
the party is complete, the whole of their beds cost two
pence ; at London the price was a little higher, that is

' Statutes 23 Ed. Ill, ch. 6, and 27 Ed. Ill, st. i, ch. 3. As to the
inns of the Middle Ages, see Francisque Michel and Ed. Foumier, " La
Grande Boheme, histoire de classes reprouvees," vol. i, " Hotelleries et
cabarets," Paris, 185 1 ; d'Avenel, " L'evolution des Moyens de Transport,"
Paris, 1919. There is in the "Vetusta monumenta," vol. iv, 181 5, pi.
XXXV., a fine view of the George Inn at Glastonbury (fifteenth century).
The New Inn at Gloucester, Northgate-street, is a good specimen of an
EngUsh inn of the fifteenth century (below, p. 131). Charming sketches of
several by Herbert Railton adorn an article on" Coaching Days and Coaching
Ways," in the "English Illustrated Magazine," July, 1888. See also
Turner and Parker, who mention several, of the fifteenth century,
' Domestic Architecture," vol. iU. pp. 46 ff.
» The Latin text of their account of expenses was published by Thorold
Rogers in his " History of Agriculture and Prices," U. p. 638.

¦J3 ,~

'.^-.L^.s^M.js^i^m^££y. M

mm.
JM^^^^Wffl^ U«gj> UQ&
THE NEW HABITS OF LUXURY. A GENTLEMAN DRESSING BEFORE THE FIRE.
[From the M.S. a B. vii., in the British Museum. Fourteenth Century.)
[p- 127.
THE ORDINARY TRAVELLER

129

a penny a head.' Sometimes they have eggs or vegetables
for a farthing, a chicken or a capon. When they had sauce
or condiments, they put them down separately, for example :
fat, |d. ; gravy, Jd. ; pickle, the same price ; sugar, 4d. ;
pepper, saffron, mustard. Fish recurs regularly every
Friday. Evening comes, the roads are dark ; the way
is lost, they take a guide, to whom they give a penny :
" In famulo ducenti nos de nocte, id." On crossing the
Humber they pay eightpence, which may appear much,
compared with the other prices ; but we must remember
that the river was wide and difficult to cross, especially

AN ENGLISH INN IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
{From the Louterell Psalter.)
in winter. The annals of the Abbey of Meaux frequently
tell of the ravages caused by the river's overflow, of farms
and mills destroyed, of entire domains submerged, and
of crops swept away. The ferry owners benefited by
these accidents, in continually augmenting their prices,
and at last the king himself was obliged to intervene in
order to re-establish the normal rate, which was a penny
for a horseman ; this is what the warden and fellows

' " Liber Albus," ed. Riley, Introduction, p. IviU. Cf. the journey
from Cambridge to York of a party of tw3nty-six scholars, in 1319. The
beds, wherever they sleep, uniformly cost 8d. for the twenty-six., W. W.
Rouse Ball, "Cambridge Papers," London, 191 8, gh, ix, "A Christmas
Journey in 13 19." 9

130 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
with their company paid.' Sometimes our travellers fur
nished themselves beforehand with provisions to carry
with them ; a salmon was bought, " for the journey,"
eighteenpence, and for having it cooked, doubtless with
some complicated sauce, they pay eightpence.
Life-like specimens of dialogues on arrival, between
traveller and innkeeper, and discussion as to the price
of victuals, may be read in the Manual of French Con
versation, composed at the end of the fourteenth century
by an Englishman, under the title of " La Maniere de
Language que t'enseignera bien a droit parler et escrire
doulz Francois." ^
Chapter iii is particularly interesting. It shows " how
a man who is going far out of his own country, riding
or walking, should behave himself and talk upon the
way." The servant sent forward to engage the room
utters the fond hope " ' that there are no fleas, nor
bugs, nor other vermin.' ' No, sir, please God,' replies
the host, ' for I make bold that you shall be well and com
fortably lodged here — save that there is a great peck of
rats and mice.' "
The provisions are passed in review, the fire lighted,
supper prepared : the traveller arrives, and it is curious
to note in what unceremonious fashion he assures him
self before dismounting that he will find at the inn " good
supper, good lodging, and the rest." 3
Further on (chap, xiii) another hostelry is described,
and the conversation between two travellers who have
just slept in the same bed shows what a trouble the
fleas were : " William, undress and wash your legs,
and then dry them with a cloth, and rub them well for
love of the fleas, that they may not leap on your legs, for
' See Appendix IX.
2 PubUshed by Prof. Paul Meyer in the Revue Critique (1870), vol. x.
P- 373- 3 " Bon souper, bon gite, et le reste " (La Fontaine),

THE NEW INN, GLOUCESTER.
[Built for PUgrims, Fifteenth Century, stUl in use.)

IP- :3i

INNS AND ALEHOUSES

1.33

there is a peck of them lying in the dust under the rushes.
... Hi ! the fleas bite me so ! and do me great harm,
for I have scratched my shoulders till the blood flows."
Beer was drunk along the way, and was found in
other places besides the inn where travellers slept at night.
At the cross-roads, in the more frequented parts of the
country, alehouses, with a long projecting pole above the
door and a bush at the end of it, invited the traveller to
have a rest and a drink. Chaucer's pilgrims, riding on
the way to Canterbury, dismounted at a house of this kind.

ON THE ROADSIDE. THE ALEHOUSE.
[From the MS. lo E. IV.; English, Fourteenth Century.)
The pardoner, who had his habits, would not begin
his tale without a little comfort :

" But first, quod he, her at this ale-stake
I wil bothe drynke and byten on a cake."
A miniature of the fourteenth century, of which we give
a reproduction, represents the alehouse with its long
horizontal pole holding its bush well out in front above
the road. The house consists but of one storey, a woman
stands before the door with a large beer-jug, and a hermit
is drinking from a large cup. It was the fashion to have
extremely long poles, which offered no inconvenience in
the country, but in town they had to be regulated, and
a maximum length fixed. According to the wording of
the Act, poles so long were used, that they " did tend
to the great deterioration of the houses in which they

134 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
were placed," and they reached so far and had signs so
low, that they were in the way of the riders' heads. The
Act of 1375 relating these grievances orders that in future
poles shall not extend more than seven feet over the public
way,' which was enough to give picturesqueness to streets
not so wide as ours.
There were taverns of ill-fame, especially in towns,
so bad some of them, that they might almost have gone
by another name. In one of the Latin dramas of Hrots-
vitha,2 tenth century, is shown the holy hermit Abraham,
who, learning that the girl Mary, whom he had reared in
virtue, lived as a courtesan in a hostelry, goes to her, pre
tending love, and converts her. In most mediaeval story
books telling of the prodigal son, he is usually repre
sented sowing his very wild oats at the inn or tavern.
Musicians of the meanest order would entertain the sitters
at the table with their pipings, and then pass the hat.3
Having to answer before Archbishop Arundel for his dis
paraging statements concerning pilgrimages, the Lollard
William Thorpe declares in 1407 that pilgrims are fre
quenters of ill-famed hostelries, " spending their goods
upon vitious hostelars, which are oft uncleane women of
their bodies." 4 In some such inn, the " Cheker of the
Hope " (hoop) in Canterbury, the continuator of Chaucer
leads his pilgrims, and shows how the pardoner's advances
to Kit the tapster had the edifying result of getting for him
many more blows than caresses. 5
In London it was forbidden by the king to keep open
' Riley's " Memorials of London," p. 386.
- Ed. Barack, Nurenberg, 1858; Fr. translation by Magnin, Paris, 1845.
3 F. Michel and E. Foumier, " La Grande Boheme" I, pp. 200 ff.
4 FurnivaU, "Tale of Beryn," Early EngUsh Text Society, 1887
p. viii., or Arber, " EngUsh Garner," vi. 84.
5 "When aU this ffieshe feleship were com to Cauntirbury . . .
They toke hir In, and loggit hem at mydmorrowe, I trowe,
Atte ' Cheker of the hope,' that many a man doith knowe."
Prologue to the "Tale of Beryn." E.E.T.S., 19C9, p. i.

INNS AND ALEHOUSES 135
house after curfew, and for very sufficient reasons, " because
such offenders as aforesaid, going about by night, do
commonly resort and have their meetings and hold their
evil talk in taverns more than elsewhere, and there do
seek for shelter, lying in wait and watching their time to
do mischief." '
It was for fear of such dangers that when the sheriffs
and bailiffs held their Views of Frankpledge, they asked
the juries of their hundreds to say upon oath what they
knew " of such as continually haunt taverns, and no man
knoweth whence they come ; of such as sleep by day
and watch by night, eat well and drink well, and possess
nothing." ^
Langland's life-like picture of a tavern in the four
teenth century is well known. With a vivid realism
worthy of Rabelais he makes us hear and see the tumul
tuous scenes at the alehouse, the discussions, the quarrels,
the big bumpers, the drunkenness which ensues ; every
face is plainly visible, coarse words, laughter and attitudes
strike the on-looker in that strange assembly, where the
hermit meets the cobbler and " the clerk of the churche,"
a band of cut-purses and bald-headed tooth-drawers :
" Thomme the tynkere • and tweye of hus knaves,
Hicke the hakeneyman • and Howe the neldere,3
Claryce of Cockeslane • the clerk of the churche,
Syre Peeres of Prydie • and Purnel of Flanders,
An haywarde and an heremyte ¦ the hangeman of Tyborne,
Dauwe the dykere ¦ with a dosen harlotes.
Of portours and of pyke-porses • and pylede toth-drawers. . . .
Ther was lauhyng and lakeryng and ' let go the coppe ! '
Bargeynes and bevereges • by-gunne to aryse.
And seten so til evesong rang."4

' Statutes for the City of London, 13 Ed. I, " Statutes of the Realm,"
vol. i. p. 102, A.D. 1285.
2 Articles of the View of Frankpledge, of probably 1 8 Ed. II, " Statutes,"
vol. i. p. 246 (French text). 3 Hugh the needle-seUer.
4 " Piers the Plowman," Skeat's edition. Text C, passus vii. U. 364-370,
394-

136 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Peasants, too, are found there. Christine de Pisan,
that poetess whose writings and character so often recall
steady John Gower, shows them drinking, fighting,
gambling ; they have to appear before the provost, and
fines accrue to augment their losses:
" At these taverns each day will you find them estab
lished, and enjoying long potations. As soon as their
work is over, many agree to go there and drink, and they
spend, you may be sure, more than they have earned all
day. Do not ask if they fight when they are tipsy, the
provost has several pounds in fines from it during the
year. . . . And there also are to be seen some of those
idle gallants who haunt taverns, handsome and gay." '
Art, literature, the trend of thought were changed at
the time of the Rennaissance, but tavern-s remained the
same ; witness Skelton's description of an alehouse on
the highroad, quite similar to those which Langland had
known a century and a half earlier. The ale-wife, who
brews, God knows how, her beer herself, is a withered old
crony, not unlike the " weiid sisters " who were to welcome
' "Par ces tavemes chacun jour,
Vous en trouveriez a sejour,
Beuvans la toute la joumee
Aussi tost que ont fait leur joumee.
Maint y aconvient aier boire :
La despendent, c'est chose voire.
Plus que toute jour n'ont gaigne.
:^ :^ i^ i^ H:
La ne convient il demander
S'ilz s'entrebatent quand sont yvres ;
Le prevost en a plusieurs livres
D'amande tout au long de Fan.
* * * il: *
Et y verries de ces gallans
Oyseux qui tavemes poursuivent.
Gays et jolis."
" Le Livre de la mutacion de fortune," Bk. iii, MS. Fr. 603, Biblio
theque Nationale, Paris. Christine de Pisan's " CEuvres poetiques," are
being pubUshed by the " Societe de Anciens textes Francais," ed. Maurice
Roy, 1886 ff.

INNS AND ALEHOUSES 137
Macbeth on the heath. She keeps her tavern near Leather-
head, in Surrey, on a declivity by the highroad, and there
gathers as motley a crowd as that in the " Visions,"
" Her nose somdele hoked.
And camously croked .
Her skynne lose and slacke,
Grained like a sacke.
With a croked backe. . . .
She breweth noppy ale.
And maketh therof port sale
To travellars, to tynkers,
To sweters, to swynkers.
And all good ale drinkers."
Passers-by and dwellers in the neighbourhood flock
to her house :

' Some go streyght thyder.
Be it slaty or slyder ;
They holde the hye waye.
They care not what men say.
Be that as be may ;
Some, lothe to be espyde.
Start in at the back syde.
Over the hedge and pale,
And all for the good ale."

The reputation of the houses with a long pole and
bush had not improved, and many of those who fre
quented them had, as we see, little wish to be " espyde."
As for paying the score, there was the rub ! Devotees of
drink whose purse was empty would not deprive them
selves, however, and they paid in kind :

" Instede of coyne and monny.
Some brynge her a conny.
And some a pot with honny.
Some a salt, and some a spone.
Some their hose, some theyr shone

138 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
As to the women, one brings :
" her weddynge-rynge
To pay for her scot,
As cometh to her lot.
Som bryngeth her husbandes hood,
Because the ale is good." '
The worst-famed of these houses began a little later
to receive the visits of the most illustrious of their cus
tomers, one who held his court under their smoky rafters
and came there to his earthly end, " babbling of green
fields," immortal Sir John Falstaff. IV
Other isolated houses along the roads, by the fords
or the bridges, on sacred spots, on the cliffs by the sea,
had also much to do with travellers, those of the hermits.
Such holy men would tell the way, help to cross a river,
sometimes give shelter, sometimes absolution. * One shrives
passers-by in that gem of mediaeval French stories, " Le
chevalier au barisel "; another, in the " Roman de Renard,"
being favoured with a visit from no less a person than the
hero of the romance. Led by a peasant through the
pathless wood. Master Reynard reaches the secluded
spot ; the mallet was hanging before the door, and the
peasant having given with it a loud knock the hermit
hastened to draw the bolt :
' " Elynour Ruramynge." " Poetical Works of John Skelton," ed.
Dyce, 1843, vol. i. p. 95.
' Jurors find in 1375 that the bridge in the midst of the causey between
Brant Broughton and Lincoln was primarily made " by a certain hermit
after the first pestilence," and consisted " in a board placed above the ford "
which had to be waded through : " Jurati dicunt supra sacramentum
suum . . . quod pons predictus post primam pestilenciam ibidem primo
per quendam heremitum factus fuit, ponendo tabulam ultra quoddam
vadum in medio calceti predict!." Complete text in C. T. Flower, " Public
Works in Mediaeval Law," Selden Society, 191 5, i- 263.

THE HERMIT.AGE CHAPEL OF ST. ROBERT.
{Hewn out of the rock, Knaresborough , the knight of a much

later date.)

^P- 139.

ROADSIDE HERMITS 141
Tant ont erre par le bocage
Qu'Us sont venu a I'ermitage.
Le maillet troverent pendant
A la porte par de devant.
Li vileins hurte durement
Et Termite vint erraument (promptly),
Li fermal oste de la roille (bolt).'
Most holy in early times, living examples of renounce
ment, teaching virtue and piety by their words and deeds,
hermits became, some of them, canonized saints, like
St. Robert of Knaresborough,^ or devotional writers of
fame like Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole ; pilgrims
flocked to their cells in order to be sanctified by their
advice and presence. An " officium de Sancto Ricardo
eremita " was composed after Richard Rolle's death, in
the thought that he would surely be canonized some day :
Letetur felix Anglorum patria . . .
Pange lingua graciosi
Ricardi preconium,
Pii, puri, preciosi,
Fugientis vitium.3
These men fasted, had ecstasies, were tempted by the
devil, who in the case of Richard, instead of clumsily taking
some hideous shape (see further, p. 290) took the much
more enticing one of " a faire yonge womane, the
whilke," wrote the hermit, " I had sene be-fore and
the whilke luffed (loved) me noght a little in gude
lufe." 4
The cave or hermitage in which Saint Robert spent
' " Roman de Renart," Branch viii. ed. Martin i. p. 267. On the
outcome of this confession, see further. Part iU. chap. Ui.
^ The son of a mayor of York; d. about 1235. Miracles are said
to have been worked at the Knaresborough hermitage, Yorkshire, where
he had lived and was buried.
3 "EngUsh Prose Trerties," ed. Perry, E.E.T.S., 1866, pp. xv, xvj.
Rolle died in 1349,
4 Ibid. p. 5.

142 ENGLISH WAYFARING UFE
most of his life still exists at Knaresborough, entirely
hollowed out of the rock, with a later-date perpendicular
window.' Persuaded, rightly or wrongly, that they had much
to atone for, the kings included among the redeeming
good works to be performed by them aid to holy hermits.
One of the pilgrims who visited St. Robert was King
John, who came unheralded and who, according to the
metrical life of the saint, had some trouble in making
him notice his presence :
Roberd he fand knelan prayand,
Hys orysons contynuand,
That for na! noyse that thai couth m^aike
Nay mare he meowed than dose ane ake (oak).^
Edward III gives to " three hermits and eight anchor
ite recluse persons within the city of London and in the
suburbs thereof, to wit to each of them, 13s. 4d. in aid
of their support." 3 Welcomed on his landing, in 1399,
by a seaside hermit called Matthew Danthorp, " in quodam
loco called Ravenserespourne " (Ravenspur), Bolingbroke,
' Another example still in existence is the hermitage at Warkworth,
Northumberland, partly of masonry and partly scooped out of the rock.
It was apparently enlarged by its successive inhabitants, but seems from
the style of the windows and carvings to belong mostly to the fourteenth
century. 2 " The Metrical Life of Saint Robert of Knaresborough," ed. Hasle-
wood and Douce, Roxburghe Club, 1824, p. 36. Cf. " Rotuli Chartarum
in Turri Londinensi asservati," ed. T. D. Hardy, 1837, p. 158, where
King John is seen bestowing on one Robert, in 1205, " locum in quo here-
mitorium sancte Wereburge sedet " (the famous St. Werburga, abbess of
Ely, seventh century). He does so " pro amore Dei et pro salute anime
nostre." He grants, " in puram et perpetuam elemosinam," the " here-
mUtorium de Godeland" to the monks of Whitby, Oct. 26, 1205, ibid.
p. 159. 3 Both sorts generally lived by themselves, but the recluse never left
his cell while the hermit could roam about. " Issue Roll of Thomas de
Brantingham," ed. Devon, p. 393, 44 Ed. Ill ; the same king gives also
20s. " in aid of her support " to " Alice de Latimer a recluse anchorite,"
ibid. p. xxxvi.

ROADSIDE HERMITS 143
soon to be King Henry IV, grants him and all the hermits
his successors a variety of favours, including the right
to any waif or wreck cast by the sea on the sand for two
leagues about his hermitage : " Cum wrecco maris, et
wayfs et omnibus aliis proficuis et commoditatibus super
sabulum per duas leucas circa eundem locum contingen-
tibus imperpetuum," in spite of any statute to the
contrary.' Less brilliant fortunes and less holy a fame usually
fell to the lot of English hermits of the fourteenth century.
Those like Rolle of Hampole, doing ceaseless penance,
consumed by divine love, were rare exceptions ; they
lived by preference in cottages, built at the most frequented
parts of the highway, or at the entrance to bridges.- They
throve there, like Godfrey Pratt,3 on the charity of the
passers-by ; the bridge with its chapel was in itself almost
a sacred building ; the presence of the hermit sanctified
it still further. He attended to the keeping in order of
the building, or was supposed to do so, and was willingly
given a farthing.4 A strange race of men, which in that
century of disorganization and reform, when everything
seemed either to die or undergo a new birth, multiplied
in spite of rules and regulations. They swelled the num
ber of parasites of the religious edifice, cloaking under
a dignified habit a life that was less so. These evil growths
I "Teste Rege, apud Westmonasterium, 1° die Octobris [1399]-"
Rymer's " Foedera."
¦¦ See, for an example of a hermit settled at the corner of a bridge, an
Act of ' resumption which formally excepts a grant of 14s. yearly to the
" Heremyte of the Brigge of Loyne and his succSssours," 4 Ed. IV, " Rolls
of Parliament," v. p. 546. Another example is to be found in J. Britton,
" On Ancient Gate-houses," " Memoirs illustrative of the History of Nor
folk," London, Archajological Institute, 1851, p. 137, where hermits are
mentioned who lived on Bishop's Bridge, Norwich, in the thirteenth century
and after.
3 See before, pp. 41 ff.
4 See above as to the part taken by the clergy in the collection of offer
ings, and in the cere and n^aintenarce of bridges, chap. i.

144

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

clung, like moss in the damp of the cathedral, to the fissures
of the stones, and by the slow work of centuries threatened
the noble structure with ruin. What remedy was there ?
To mow down the ever-growing weeds was scarcely
possible ; a patient hand, guided by a vigilant eye, was
needed to pluck them out one by one, and to fill up the
interstices : saints can do this, but saints are rare. Episcopal
prescriptions might often seem to do great work ; a mere
seeming. Though the heads were beaten down, the

nr.iiirotprm-Mrei'rttir.mK

A HERMIT TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL.
{From the MS. lo E. IV; Enghsh; Fourteenth Century.)

roots remained, and the lively parasite struck yet deeper
into the heart of the wall.
Solemn interdictions and rigorous rules were not
wanting, bowing down heads which ever rose again. To
become a hermit a man must be resolved on an exemplary
life of poverty and privations, and, that imposture should
be impossible, he must have episcopal sanction, that is,
possess " testimonial letters from the ordinary." ' These
I 12 Rich. II, chap, vii, " Statutes of the Realm." A sample of a
hermit's vow, with an analysis of a fourteenth-century text describing the
ceremony for the consecration of a herm.it, is in E. L. Cutts, " Scenes and

ROADSIDE HERMITS 145
rules were broken, however, without scruple. Inside his
dwelling the not very devout creature in hermit's garb
could lead a quiet, easy life, and it was so hard elsewhere 1
The charity of passers-by was enough for him to li\e
upon, especially if he was not harassed by an over-exact
ing conscience and knew how to beg ; no labour, no
pressing obligation, the bishop was distant and the ale
house near. All these reasons caused a never-ending
growth of the mischievous species of false hermits who
only took the habit to live by it, without asking any permit
from any one. In the statutes they were bracketed with
beggars, wandering labourers, and vagabonds of all kinds,
pell mell, to be imprisoned awaiting judgment. There
was exception only for " approved " hermits : " Except
men of religion and approved hermits having letters testi
monial from the ordinary." A statute like this is enough
to show that Langland did not exaggerate ; his verse is
but a commentary on the law. The author of the
" Visions " is impartial and does justice to sincere anchor
ites : true Christians resemble them.' But what are these
false saints who have pitched their tent by the side of
the highroads or even in the towns, at the door of the
alehouse, who beg under the church porches, who eat
and drink plentifully, and leisurely pass the evenings
warming themselves .''
" Ac eremites that en-habiten • by the heye weyes.
And in borwes a-mong brewesters • and beggen in churches." ^
What is that man who rests and roasts himself by
the hot coals, and when he has drunk. his fill has nothing
to do but go to bed ?
Characters of the Middle Ages," 1872, pp. 98, 99. A list is given, p. in,
of the StiU subsisting EngUsh hermitages.
' " Piers Plowman," Skeat's edition. Text C, passus i. 1. 30 ; passus
X. 1. 195.
2 Ibid., passus x. 1. 188. 10

146 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
" lewede eremytes.
That loken ful louheliche • to lacchen. ' mennes almesse.
In hope to sitten at even • by the hote coles,
Unlouke hus legges abrod ¦ other lygge at hus ese,
Reste hym and roste hym • and his ryg (back) turne,
Drynke drue and deepe • and drawe hym thanne to bedde ;
And when hym lyketh and lust • hus leve ys to aryse ;
When he ys rysen, rometli out • and ryght wel aspieth
Whar he may rathest have a repast • other a rounde of bacon,
Sulver other sode mete • and som tyme bothe,
A loof other half a loof " other a lompe of chese ;
And carieth it hom to hus cote • and cast hym to lyve
In ydelnesse and in ese." ^
All these are unworthy of pity, and, adds Langland,
with that aristocratic touch which now and then recurs
in his lines, all these hermits were common artisans,
" workmen, webbes and taillours, and carters' knaves " ;
formerly they had " long labour and lyte wynnynge,"
but they noticed one day that these deceitful friars swarm
ing everywhere, " hadde fatte chekus " (cheeks) ; they
thereupon abandoned their labour and took lying garments,
as though they were clerks :
..." Other of som ordre, other elles a prophete."
They are seldom seen at church, these false hermits,
but they are found seated at great men's tables because
of their cloth. Look at them eating and drinking of
the best ! they who formerly were of the lowest rank,
at the side tables, never tasting wine, never eating white
bread, without a blanket for their bed :
" Ac while he wrought in thys worlde • and wan hus mete with treuthe.
He sat atte sydbenche • and secounde table ;
Cam no wyn in hus wombe • thorw the weke longe,
Nother blankett in hus bed " ne white bred by-fore hym.
The cause of al thys caitifte • cometh of meny bisshopes
That suffren suche sottes." 3

I Look humbly to gain alms.
= "Piers Plowman," Skeat's edition. Text C, passus x. U. 140-152.
3 Text C, passus x. U. 251-256.

ROADSIDE HERMITS 147
These rascals escape the bishops, who ought to have
their eyes wider open. " Alas ! " said, in charming
language, a French poet of the thirteenth century, Rutebeuf,
" the coat does not make the hermit ; if a man dwell in
a hermitage and be clothed in hermit's dress, I don't care
two straws for his habit nor his vesture if he does not
lead a life as pure as his frock betokens. But many folk
make a fine show and marvellous seeming of worth ; they
resemble those over-blossoming trees that fail to bring
forth fruit." '
Under the eyes of the placid hermit, comfortably
established by the roadside, calmly preparing himself by
a carefree life for a blissful eternity, moved the variegated
flow of travellers, vagabonds, wayfarers, and wanderers.
His benediction rewarded the generous passer-by ; the
stern look of the austere man did not disturb his sancti
monious indifference. The life of others might rapidly
consume itself, burnt by the sun, gnawed by care ; his
own endured in the shade of the trees, and continued
without hurt, lulled by the murmur of human passions —
Et je dirai, songeant aux hommes, que font-ils }
Et le ressouvenir des amours et des haines
Me bercera pareil au bruit des mers lointaines.
(Sully Prudhomme.)

' " Li abis ne fet pas Termite ;
S'uns hom en hermitage abite
Et s'U en. a les dras vestus,
Je ne pris mie deus festus
Son abit ne sa vesteure,
S'il ne maine vie aussi pure
Comme son abit nous demonstre ;
Mes maintes genz font bele monstre
Et merveilleux sanblant qu'il vaillent :
II sanblent les arbres qui faillent
Qui furent trop bel au florir."
Le Dit de frere Denise. " CEuvres completes de Rutebeuf," ed. Jubinal,
Paris, 1874, vol. ii. p. 63.

148 ENGLISH "WAYFARING LIFE
Good or bad, the whole race (still surviving in the
East) disappeared in England at the Reformation,
leaving but a memory, and surviving only in poetry :
It is the Hermit good !
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He'll shrive my soul, he'll wash away
The Albatross's blood.

AN ESCAPED PRISONER FLYING TO SANCTUARY.
[From the MS. lo E. IV.)

CHAPTER III
SECURITY OF THE ROADS
THESE roads, thus followed in every direction by
the king and the lords moving from one manor to
another, by the merchants and peasants going to
the fair, the market, or the staple, by sheriffs, monks and
itinerant justices, by ladies in carriages and villains driving
their carts, were they safe ? The theorist studying the
legal ordinances of the period, and the manner in which
the county police and the town watch and ward were
organized, might come to the conclusion that precautions
were well taken for the prevention of misdeeds, and that
travelling did not present more danger than it does at
present. If we add, as Mr. Thorold Rogers has shown,
that common carriers plied their trade between Oxford
and London, Winchester, Newcastle, etc., and that the
price of transport was not dear, we might be persuaded
that the roads were quite safe, and we should be wrong ;
wrong too, if on the faith of romantic tales, we pictured
to ourselves brigands in every thicket, a hanged majx OA

ISO ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
every branch, and robber barons at every cross-road. But
accident, or the unexpected, must be taken into account.
Accident played a great part in the social life of the
fourteenth century. It was the moment when modern
life began, the outward brilliancy of a novel civiliza
tion had recently modified society from top to bottom,
the need to be constantly on the watch had become less
apparent ; the moated castle with its drawbridge, battle
ments and loop-holes, had begun to change into a villa
or a mansion, while the hut was growing into a house.
Confidence was greater, but not always justified : accidents
are unexpected mishaps.
More means were taken than formerly to hinder
ill-doing ; but numerous occurrences happened to destroy
this incipient security. Society was in reality neither
calm nor quite settled, and many of its members were
still half savage. The term " half" may be taken literally.
If a list were made of the characteristics of such or such
an individual of the time, it would be found that some
belonged to a refined, and some to a barbarous world.
Hence these contrasts : on one side order, which it would
perhaps be unjust not to consider as the normal condition ;
and on the other, the frequent ebullitions of the untamed
nature. Let us select an example of such accidents which
could take at times remarkable proportions. Here are
a knight and his men at the corner of a road, waiting for
a troop of merchants. The text itself of the victims'
petition gives all the details of the encounter.'
~~ The facts happened in 1342. Some Lichfield mer
chants state to their lord, the Earl of Arundel, that on a
certain Friday they sent two servants and two horses
laden with " spicery and mercery," worth forty pounds,
to Stafford for the next market day. When their men
" came beneath Cannock Wood " they met Sir Robert
de Rideware, Knight, waiting for them, together with
' Printed jn the " Archaeological Journal," vol. iv. p. 69.

SECURITY OF THE ROADS 151
two of his men, who seized on the servants, horses,
and goods,- and took them to the priory of Lappeley.
Unfortunately for the knight, during the journey, one of
the servants escaped.
At the priory the band found " Sir John de Oddyn-
gesles, Esmon de Oddyngesles, and several others, knights
as well as others." It was evidently a pre-arranged affair,
carefully devised ; all was done according to rule ; they
shared " among them the aforesaid mercery and spicery,
each one a portion according to his degree." That done,
the company left Lappeley and rode to the priory of
Blythebury, a nuns' priory. Sir Robert declared that
they were the king's men, quite exhausted, and begged
for hospitality. But the company had obviously a sus
picious appearance, and the abbess refused. Indignant
at this unfriendly reception, the knights burst open the
doors of the barns and lofts, gave hay and oats to their
horses, and so passed the night.
But they were not the only people to have made a
good use of their time. The escaped servant had fol
lowed them at a distance ; when he saw they had taken
up their quarters at the priory he returned with all speed
to Lichfield and warned the bailiff who hastened to collect
his men for the pursuit of the robbers. The latter, men
of the sword, as soon as they were met, stood their ground,
and a real battle took place, in which they had at first the
upper hand, and wounded several of their pursuers. At
length, however, they were worsted and fled ; all the spices
were recovered, and four of their company taken, who,
without further ado, were beheaded qn the spot.
Robert de Rideware was not one of the latter, and
did not lose heart. He met his relative Walter de Ride
ware, lord of Hamstall Rideware, with some of his followers,
while the bailiff was on his way back to Lichfield ; all
together veered around in pursuit of the bailiff. A fresh
fight. This time the king's officer w^s routed and fled,

152 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
while the highway gentlemen once more captured the
spices.
^— What resource remained for the unhappy William
and Richard, authors of the petition ? Resort to
justice ? This they wanted to do. But as they were
going for this purpose to Stafford, chief town of the
county, they found at the gates some retainers of their
persecutors, who barred their passage and even attacked
them so hotly that they had difficulty in escaping without
grievous hurt. They returned to Lichfield, watched by
their enemies, and led there a pitiable existence. " And, sir,
the aforesaid William and Richard, and several people of
the town of Lichfield, are menaced by the said robbers and
their maintainers, so that they dare not go anywhere out
of the said town." '
This legal document, the original of which has been
preserved, is, in many ways, characteristic, and shows
us local tyrants not unlike the latter day ones in the
Promessi Sposi and their terrible bravi. One may,
especially, notice the coolness and determination of the
knights, not disconcerted by the death of four of their
number ; the attack under cover of a wood ; the selection
of the victims, " garsuns " belonging to rich merchants ;
the request for hospitality in a priory under pretext of
journeying in the king's service ; the expeditious justice
of the bailiff, and the persistent surveillance to which the
victims were subjected by their lordly robbers.
These, though remarkable, are not quite exceptional
facts, and Robert of Rideware was not the only man on
the look out in the copses along the roads. Other noble
men were, like him, supported by devoted retainers, ready
for any enterprise. Capes and liveries of their masters'
colours were given to them, and they went about as the
' " E, sire, les avant ditz WiUiam e Richart e plusours gentz de la
ville de Lichfield sount menace des ditz larons e lour main tenours qu'ils
n'osent nule part aier hors de la ditc ville."

SECURITY OF THE ROADS 153
uniformed soldiers of their chief ; a lord well surrounded
with his partizans considered himself as above the common
law, and it was no easy matter for justice to make herself
respected by him. The custom of having a number of
resolute followers wearing one's colours became universal
at the end of Edward Ill's reign and under Richard II ;
it survived in spite of statutes ' during the whole of the
fifteenth century, and contributed to render even more
embittered and bloody the War of the Roses.
But even outside the periods of civil war, the misdeeds
of certain barons and their retainers, or of retainers acting
on their own account under cover of their lord's colours
— " notoirs meffesours et meintenours of meffesours," the
statute said of both,^ — were at times so frequent and serious
that parts of the country seemed to be in a state of war.
Throughout the fourteenth century, the abuse called
maintenance, which word meant in old French protection,
was on the increase, in spite of all the efforts of king and
Parliament. The great of the land, and some lesser people
too, had their own men, sworn to their service and ready
to do anything they were commanded, which consisted
sometimes in the most monstrous deeds, such as securing
property or other goods to which neither their masters,
nor any claimant paying their master in order to be thus
" protected," 3 had any title. They terrorized the rightful
' Richard II had several times to renew and confirm them, but without
effect. In his first statute upon this subject he condemns the super
abundance of retainers which many men, though of indifferent means, delight
in; he declares "that divers people of small revenue of land, rent, or other
possessions, do make great retinue of people, as well of esquires as of other,
in many parts of the realm " (i Richard II, cap. 7, a.d. 1377). The third
statute of 13 Richard II, that of his i6th year (cap. 4), that of his 20th
year (cap. i and 2), are likewise directed against the abuse of liveries and
the number of retainers of the " lords spiritual and temporal." Henry VI
renewed these statutes, also without result.
2 10 Ed. Ill, year 1336.
3 Those who divided among themselves the prospective profit of a law
suit "maintained" in tlis way, were called " champertors," campi participes.

154 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
owners, the judges and the juries, ransoming, beating
and maiming any opponent.'
Statutes were, as usual, numerous, well-meant, per
emptory, and inefficient. The evil was so general that
Edward III had to forbid the people nearest him, the
chief officers of his court, his " dearest consort, the queen,"
his son the prince of Wales, the prelates of Holy Church,^
to thus interfere with the regular course of the law. The
will of the king is that " the poor should enjoy their right
just as the rich. "3 But they do not ; great ladies practice
maintenance, one among others even dearer to the king
than his dear consort, namely his mistress, Alice Perers.4
A new reign begins ; maintenance flourishes better
than ever before. The preamble of a statute of the second
year of Richard II 5 gives a perhaps somewhat exaggerated
picture of these disorders so as to better justify rigorous
measures, but the description must have been at least
partly true. We there see — and the king, it is stated,
has learnt it both from the petitions addressed to parlia
ment and by public rumour — that certain people in several
parts of the kingdom claimed " to have right to divers
lands, tenements and other possessions, and some espying
women and damsels unmarried, and some desiring to
make maintenance in their marches, do gather together
to a great number of men of arms and archers, to the manner
of war, and confederate themselves by oath and other
confederacy." These people, having no " consideration
to God, nor to the laws of Holy Church, nor of the land,
which was forbidden by numerous statutes. See e.g. the " Ordinacio de
Conspiratoribus," 33 Ed. I, year 1305.
' 4 Ed. Ill, chap. 2, year 1330.
= 20 Ed. Ill, chap. 4, 5, 6, year 1346.
3 " Le Roi desire que commun droit soit fait a toutz, auxibien a povres
come i riches." i Ed. Ill, stat. ii, ch. 14.
4 In the petition to the Good ParUament, 1376, she is included among
" les femmes qui ont pursuys en les Courtz du Roi diverses busoignes et
quereles par voie de maintenance et pur lower (gain) et part avoir."
5 Statute 2 Richard II, stat. i. cap. 6, a.d. 1378,

SECURITY OF THE ROADS 155
ror to right, nor justice, but refusing and setting apart
all process of the law, do ride in great routs in divers parts
of England, and take possession and set them in divers
manors, lands, and other possessions of their own authority,
and hold the same long with such force, doing many manner
apparelments of war ; and in some places do ravish women
and damsels, and bring them into strange countries, where
please them ; and in some places lying in await with such
routs do beat and maim, murder and slay the people, for
to have their wives and their goods, and the same women
and goods retain to their own use ; and sometimes take
the king's liege people in their houses, and bring and
hold them as prisoners, and at the last put them to fine
and ransom as it were in a land of war ; and sometimes
come before the justices in their sessions in such guise
with great force, whereby the justices be afraid and not
hardy to do the law ; and do many other riots and horrible
offences, whereby the realm in divers parts is put in great
trouble, to the great mischief and grievance of the people." '
Which shows how vainly the Good Parliament had worked,
for, in 1376, the Commons had already made exactly
similar complaints : " Now great riot begins anew by
' The picture in this statute is so complete that there is scarcely need
to quote other texts ; they are, however, numerous. In the petitions to
parliament will be found many complaints by private people for acts of
violence of which they had been victims, for imprisonment by their enemies,
robberies, arson, destruction of game or fish in the parks. Examples :
petition of Agnes Atte Wode, she and her son beaten and robbed (ibid. i.
p. 372); of Agnes of Aldenby, beaten by malefactors (" Rolls of Parliament,"
i. p. 37 5) ; of the inhabitants of several towns of the county of Hertford, who
have been imprisoned and forced to pay ransom by the knight John of Patmer
(i. p. 389) ; of John of Grey, who was attacked by fifteen malefactors so
resolute as to set fire to a town and storm a castle (i. p. 397) ; of Robert
Power, who is robbed and his mansion sacked, his people beaten, by " men
all armed as men of war " (i. p. 410) ; of Ralph le BotiUer, who has seen
his mansion pillaged and burnt by eighty men, who came with arms and
baggage, bringing ropes and hatchets on carts (u. p. 88), etc. In France,
it is well known, the misdeeds of this kind were still more numerous btit
then a cpntinual state of war was raging there,

156 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
many people in different parts of England who ride with
a great number of armed men," etc'
Besides these organized and quasi-seignorial bands,
there were ordinary robbers, numerous enough for chantries
to have been founded " for the safety of travellers who
were in danger from thieves." ^ Against those people
who impeded travelling much more grievously than
ever the floods and broken bridges, Edward I had taken,
in 1285, special measures in the Statute of Winchester.
These men were described there as accustomed to crouch
down in the ditches, coppice, or brushwoods near the
roads, especially those linking two market towns. This
was, of course, the passage-way of many easy victims,
richly laden. The king orders therefore that, for a space
of two hundred feet, the ground on each side of the road
should be cleared in such a manner that there remain
neither coppice nor brushwood, nor hollow nor ditch
which serve as shelter for malefactors : " ou leur peut
tapir pur mal fere." Only large trees such as oaks might
be left. The owner of the soil had to do the work; if he
neglected it, he would be responsible for robberies and
murders, and have to pay a fine to the king. If the road
went through a park, the same obligation lay on the lord,
unless he consented to close it by a wall or a hedge so
thick, or by a ditch so wide and deep, that robbers could
not cross them : " qe meffesurs ne pussent passer ne
returner pur mal fere." The king sets the example and
orders such clearings to be made at once on the lands
belonging to the crown. 3
After which, things continued pretty much as before :
" Meanwhile," writes a chronicler for the years 1303-05,
' "Rolls of Parliament," ii. p. 351.
^ One founded with that object by Matthew of Dunstable in 129 c, and
" known as the chantry of Biddenham bridge in Bromham parish." " Vic
toria History of the Counties of England," Bedfordshire, vol. Ui. p. 49.
3 " Statutes of the Realm," year 1285.

SECURITY OF THE ROADS 157
" certain malefactors, bound together, four, six, ten or
twenty went in company to fairs and markets, rifled the
houses of honest people and were not ashamed to capture
through their misdoings the goods of the faithful and
rich people." ' Worse than that : we find as we progress
in the fourteenth century, that these common thieves had
improved their methods and increased their profits. They
allied themselves, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly,
to the seignorial bands, and were not henceforward un-
ticketed men for whom no one was responsible. The
Commons were aware of the fact, and complained accord
ingly : " Whereas it is notoriously known throughout all
the shires of England that robbers, thieves, and other male
factors on foot and on horseback, go and ride on the high
way through all the land in divers places, committing
larcenies and robberies : may it please our lord the king
to charge the nobility of the land that none such be
maintained by them, privately nor openly ; but that they
help to arrest and take such bad ones." ^ In the pre
ceding parliament the same complaints had been made,
and the king had already promised that he would order
" such remedy as should be pleasing to God and man." 3
But neither God nor man had had apparently cause to
be pleased. In addition to the support of the great, these evil
doers enjoyed various privileges. Some of them could be
met along the roads, cross in hand ; both king and church
forbade seizing them, they were men who had forsworn
the realm. When a robber, a murderer, or any felon
found himself too hard pressed, he ^ed into a church
and found safety. In almost all societies having reached
a certain stage of civilization the same privilege has
existed or still exists. It was known to the Romans,
' "Chronica Monasterii de Melsa," RoUs Series, ii. 275.
2 "Rolls of Parliament," vol. U. p. 201 (22 E. Ill, 1348).
3 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 165.

158

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

was legislated about by Theodosius the Great, Justinian
and the early councils,' and is still in constant use in
many parts of the East. A church in the Middle Ages
was an inviolable place : whoever crossed its threshold
was under the protection of God, and many wonderful
miracles, the history of which was familiar to everybody,
attested with what particular favour the right of sanctuary
was regarded especially by the Holy Virgin. At Walsing
ham, one of the most famous British pilgrimages, people
never failed to go and see the " Gate of the Knight,"
a gate which had stretched itself so as to give miraculous

THE KNOCKER OF THE DURHAM SANCTUARY (nORMAN).
shelter to a man on horseback, hard pursued by his enemies,
and who found himself thus opportunely placed beyond
the reach of men as well as beyond the reach of law.
Several interesting relics of old English sanctuaries are
still in existence, such as stone sign-posts which helped
the fugitive to avoid either vengeance or justice : " Even
to-day, in various parts of England, curious stone crosses,
' Earliest reference in England : that in the laws of Ethelbert, King of
Kent, later part of the sixth century, where it is said that " the penalty for
violation of church frith is to be twice that exacted for an ordinary breach
of peace." Trenholme, " The Right of Sanctuary in England," University
of Missouri Studies, 1903, p. 11.

RIGHTS OF SANCTUARY 159
inscribed with the word SanctuariuiM, are to 'be met with.
Such crosses probably marked the way to a sanctuary
and served to guide fugitives." ' At Durham is to be
seen a beautiful bronze knocker, cast and chiselled in
Norman times, still affixed to the cathedral door through
which malefactors were admitted to the sanctuary.^ As
soon as they had knocked, the door was opened, the bell
in the Galilee tower was rung, and after having confessed
before witnesses their crime, which was at once put into
writing, the culprits were allowed to enjoy the peace of
St. Cuthbert. Several churches had a chair or stool
called the fridstool, or peace chair (originally, in some
cases, a presbyteral or episcopal seat) the reaching of which
by the fugitive secured for him the maximum protection.
Beverley has one of the oldest, in stone, perfectly plain,
formerly accompanied with a Latin inscription, saying :
" This stone seat is czWedi freedstoll, that is, chair of peace,
on reaching which a fugitive criminal enjoys complete
safety." 3 The Beverley sanctuary was the most cele
brated and safest in England. 4' In this case, and in
some others, at Hexham for example, the privilege extended
not only to the church, but to one mile or more round
it, the space being divided into several circles, usually
marked by stone crosses, and it was more and more sinful
to remove fugitives violently from the sanctuary the nearer
' Trenholme, as above, p. 48.
* R. W. Billings, " Architectural Illustrations ... of the Church at
Durham," London, 1843, p. 20.
3 " Erant hujusmodi cathedrarum multas in Anglia . . . Beverlaci
autem celeberrima, qus priscorum regum benignitate (puta yEthelstani vel
alterius cujuspiam) asyli nacta privilegium, tali honestabatur inscriptione :
' Haec sedes lapidea Freedstoll dicitur, i.e. pacis cathedra, ad quam reus
fugiendo perveniens, omnimodam habet securitatem.' " H. Spelman,
" Glossarium Archaiologicum," 3rd ed., London, 1687, p. 248.
4 Though every consecrated place was a sanctuary, some of them afforded
far more safety than others, the penalties for abductors being much greater,
A list of the safest of the English sanctuaries is in S. Pegge, " A Sketch
of the History of the Asylum or Sanctuary," in " Archseologia," 1787,
vol. viU. p. 41. J

i6o

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

they were to the inner circle. If they were dragged from
the altar or the fridstool, no money atonement was accepted
from the abductor, who thus apparently forfeited his life.
Describing the several circles around the Hexham sanc
tuary. Prior Richard, who wrote between 1154 and 1167,
says of the inner one : " If any one, moved by a spirit
of madness, ventured with diabolical boldness to seize
one in the stone chair near the altar which the English
call fridstol, that is a chair of quiet or peace, or at the shrine
of the holy relics, back of the altar, no compensation will
be determined for such a glaring sacrilege, no amount

THE FRIDSTOOL AT HEXHAM ABBEY, NORTHUMBERLAND (NORMAN

of money will serve as an atonement, for it is what the
English call botolos (bootless), that is a thing for which
there can be no compensation." '
That same fridstool has been preserved, being not
improbably the original episcopal seat of the famous St.
Wilfrid, born about 634, the builder of the old church
' " Brevis annotatio Ricardi, prioris Hagustaldensis ecclesiae de
antique et modemo statu ejusdem eccles!.?," ed. Raine, " The priory of
Hexham," Surtees Society, 1864-5, 2 vols, illustrated, !. 62. The prior
has also a chapter v, " De pace inviolabili per unum milliare circumquaque
ipsius ecclesis," p. 19, and a chapter xiv on the privilege's, granted by the
king, to the Hexham Sanctuary, p. 61.

RIGHT OF SANCTUARY 163
at Hexhamx, a crypt of which, with some Roman stones
used for the walls, is still in existence.
Near the fridstool was to be seen a queer, short, stone
statue now moved to another place in the church, of a
man, with brutal features, " wearing a long coat, buttoned
in front from the neck to the waist, having three coils or
clumsy ligatures . . . round his ankles ; and he holds
erect with both hands a staff or club as tall as himself."
A. B. Wright, author of an " Essay towards the history
of Hexham," expresses the opinion that, " it was intended
to represent an officer of justice, with his staff and plume,
his feet bared and manacled, to show that within the
bounds of sanctuary he dared not move towards his
design and that there his authority availed him not." '
A confirmation of this opinion may be found in the
figures carved on the little known but very curious frid
stool at Sprotborough, Yorkshire, apparently of the four
teenth century : the fugitive who could not be properly
represented seated in the chair, since this would have
made it impossible of use, is shown protected and covered
by it, while a clumsy and much deteriorated image of
some law official, carrying his staff, stands at one of the
sides of the chair, but unable to move, being bound to
it by a collar or carcannum.^
Among the most curious remembrances of the English
sanctuaries figure the registers still preserved in some few
places, in which were entered the confessions of the
criminals at the moment they asked for admittance.
The Beverley and the Durham ones have been printed ;
both date from the fifteenth century ; that of Durham
covers the years 1464 to 1524 ; it includes, besides other
crimes, 195 murders and homicides, in which 283 persons
' Raine, as above, II, p. Ixiv. Wright's "Essay" appeared in 1823.
' Usually worn by the accused, but the law officer's intrusion would
have made him a guilty man. " Carcannum," says Du Cange, " coUis-
trigium, vinculum quo rei coUum stringitur, nostris, carcanT

164

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

are concerned, and which are divided as follows, according
to the trades and avocations of the perpetrators :

" Husbandmen
LabourersYeomen .
Gentlemen
Ecclesiastics Merchants
Tailor PlumberCarpenter

+4
4 3
2 II I

Tanner ....
Baxster ....
GloverSailor
Apprentice .
Under-Bailiff
Servant ....
Knight (an accessory)

" The occupations of the remainder are not mentioned." '
The entries in the two registers are much alike ; the
formalities are of the same kind ; the Galilee bell is
tolled, the culprit confesses ; witnesses are called to hear
him, and the names of all concerned are given in full.
Here is an example translated from the Latin original :
" To be remembered that on the 6th day of October,
1477, William Rome and William Nicholson, of the parish
of Forsate, fled to the cathedral church of St. Cuthbert
in Durham, where on account, among other things, of
a felony committed and publicly confessed by them, con
sisting of the murder by them of William Aliand, they
asked from the venerable and religious men. Sir Thomas
Haughton, sacristan of the said church, and William
Cuthbert, master of the Galilee there, both brothers and
monks of the same church, to be admitted to the benefit
of the immunity of the church, according to the liberties
and privileges conceded in old time to the most glorious
confessor Cuthbert. And by the ringing of one bell
according to custom, they obtained this benefit. There
were present there, seeing and hearing, the discreet men
William Heyhyngton, Thomas Hudson, John Wrangham,

' J. Raine, " Sanctuarium Dunelmense et Sanctuarium Beverlacense,"
London, Surtees Society, 1827, p. xxv.

RIGHT OF SANCTUARY 165
and Thomas Strynger, witnesses called in especially for
the occasion." '
At Beverley there were no witnesses : the culprit
swore, his hand on the Book. Besides stating the cause
of his flying to sanctuary he took his oath to remain peace
ful, to help in case of fire or strife, to be present at mass
on the commemoration day of King Athelstan, benefactor
of the church, etc. :
" Also ye shall bere no poynted wepen, dagger, knyfe,
ne none other wapen, ayenst the kynges pece.
" Also ye shalbe redy at all your power, if ther be
any debate or stryf, or oder sodan case of fyre within the
towne, to help to surcess it.
" Also ye shalbe redy at the obite of Kyng Adelstan,
at the dirige, and the messe, at such tyme as it is done, at
the warnyng of the belman of the towne, and doe your
dewte in ryngyng, and for to offer at the messe on the
morne," ^ etc.
To drag men out of the sanctuary was a sacrilege
punished with whipping, heavy fines, excommunication,
or even death. Nicholas le Porter had helped to snatch
from the church of the Carmelites of Newcastle some
laymen who had taken refuge there " for the safety of
their lives," and who, once delivered to the civil authority,
had been executed. Only the Pope's nuncio could secure
for him his pardon, and he had to submit to a public
penance very little in accord with our present customs :
" We order," wrote Bishop Richard to the parson of
St. Nicholas of Durham, " that on Monday, Tuesday,
and Wednesday of the Whitsun-week just coming, he
shall receive the whip from your hands publicly, before
the chief door of your church, in his shirt, bare-headed,
¦ See Appendix X, p. 434.
* " Sanctuarium Dunelmense et Sanctuarium Beverlacense," p. iii .

i66 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
and barefoot.' He shall there proclaim in English the
reason for his penance and shall admit his fault ; and
when he has thus been whipped the said Nicholas will
go to the cathedral church of Durham, bareheaded, bare
foot, and dressed as above, he will walk in front, you will
follow him ; and you will whip him in the same manner
before the door of the cathedral these three days, and he
will repeat there the confession of his sin." ^
Excommunication was the punishment meted out
to Ralph de Ferrers, one of the retainers of the then all-
powerful John of Gaunt, for having dragged from the
Westminster sanctuary, at mass time, two prisoners escaped
from the Tower where his master had sent them, and
for having killed one in the process, 1378. The Duke
of Lancaster, in alliance then with Wyclif, caused the
reformer to write one of his most virulent treatises against
the right of sanctuary, asking for its abolition.
The right was, however, maintained ; the king himself
did not dare to infringe upon it, and, though unwilling, had
to let traitors escape, by such means, his revenge or justice.
In a case of this kind, one of the Henries wrote to the
Prior of Durham, and careful as he was to state that he
bound himself only " for the present occasion," there is
no doubt that his acknowledgment of the full immunities
enjoyed by St. Cuthbert's church had nothing excep-
' Penance of this kind was not applied only to men. Women of all
ranks were obliged to submit to it. In the same Register Palatine of Dur
ham may be seen the case of Isabella of Murley, condemned for adultery
with her sister's husband, John d'Amundeville, to receive publicly " six
whippings around the market of Durham" (vol. ii. p. 695). The case
was not one of people of the lower sort ; the Amundeville family was
powerful and old-established in the county. Particulars about them from
the thirteenth century may be found in Surtees, " History and Antiquities
of the County Palatine of Durham," London, 1823, vol. iii. p. 270. Another
example is in the '' Constitutiones . . . Walteri de Cantilupo " (Bishop
of Worcester), a.d. 1240; Wilkins' "Concilia Magnis Britanniae et Hiber-
nis," London, 1757, vol. i. p. 668.
- " Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense," ed. Sir T. D. Hardy, London,
1875, vol. i. p. 315, a.d. 1313.

RIGHT OF SANCTUARY 167
tional : " Trusty and welbeloved in God," says the king,'
" we grete you well. And wheras we undirstand that
Robert Marshall late comitted to prison for treason is
now escapid and broken from the same into youre church
of Duresme, we havyng tender zele and devocion to ye
honour of God and St. Cuthbert, and for the tendir favour
and affection that the right reverend father in God our
right trusty and welbeloved the Bisshop of Duresme our
chauncellor of England we have for his merits wol that
for that occasion nothyng be attempted that shud be
contrarie to the liberties and immunities of [your] church.
We therefor wol and charge you that he be surely kept
there as ye wol answere unto us for him." As there
could be very little need for the king to declare such an
obvious feeling as his respect for St. Cuthbert, the earnest
recommendation by which he ends his epistle is most
likely to have been the real cause of his writing to his
wellbeloved the Prior of Durham. Another character
istic instance is the rebellion of Jack Cade in 1450, when
one of his accomplices fled to St. Martin-le-Grand, the
most famous of the London sanctuaries. The king in
this case wrote to the Dean of St. Martin's ordering him
to produce the traitor. This the Dean refused to do, and he
exhibited his charters, which being found correct and explicit,
the fugitive was allowed to remain in safety where he was.^
The right of sanctuary was most valuable, not only
for political offenders, but also, and more frequendy, for
robbers. They escaped from prison, fled to the church,
and saved their lives. " In this year," 1324, say the
" Croniques de London," 3 " ten persons escaped out
of Newgate, of whom five were retaken, and four escaped
' Henry IV or Henry V. Raine, " Sanctuarium Dunelmense," p. xvii.
' " Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church or Royal free Chapel
and Sanctuary of St. Martin le Grand, London," by A. J. Kempe, London,
1825, p. 136.
3 " Croniques de London," edited by G. J. Aungier, Camden Society,
1844, p. 48 ; written by a contemporary of the events.

1 68 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
to the church of St. Sepulchre, and one to the church of
St. Bride, and afterwards all for-swore England." But
when the refugees were watched in the church by their
personal enemies, their situation, as evidenced by the
statute of 1315-1316, became perilous. The authors of
a petition ' to the king set forth in that year that armed
men established themselves in the cemetery, and even
in the sanctuary, to watch the fugitive, and guarded him
so strictly that he could not even go out to satisfy his
natural wants. They hindered food from reaching him ;
if the felon decided to swear that he would quit the king
dom his enemies followed him on the road, and in spite
of the law's protection dragged him away and beheaded
him without judgment. The king reforms all these
abuses,^ and re-enacts, the old regulations as to abjuration,
which were as follows : " When a robber, murderer, or
other evil-doer shall fly unto any church upon his con
fession of felony, the coroner shall cause the abjuration
to be made thus : Let the felon be brought to the church
door, and there be assigned, unto him a port, near or far
off, and a time appointed for him to go out of the realm,
so that in going towards that port he carry a cross in his
hand, and that he go not out of the king's highway, neither
on the right hand, nor on the left, but that he keep it
always until he shall be gone out of the land ; and that
he shall not return without special grace of our lord the
king." The felon took oath in the following terms : " This
hear thou, sir coroner, that I, N., am a robber of sheep,
or of any other beast, or a murderer of one or of more,
and a felon to our lord the King of England, and because
I have done many such evils or robberies in this land, I
' " ArticuU cleri," statute 9 E. II, cap. 10.
* He forbids those on guard to stay in the cemetery, unless there is
imminent danger of flight. The felon may have the " necessaries of life "
in the sanctuary.

RIGHT OF SANCTUARY 169
do abjure the land of our lord Edward King of England,
and I shall haste me towards the port of such a place which
thou hast given me, and I shall not go out of the highway,
and if I do I will that I be taken as a robber and felon
to our lord the king ; and at such a place I will diligently
seek for passage, and that I will tarry there but one flood
and ebb, if I can have passage ; and unless I can have
it in such a place I will go every day into the sea up to my
knees assaying to pass over ; and unless I can do this
within forty days, I will put myself again into the church
as a robber and a felon to our lord the king. So God me
help and his holy judgment." '
Dover was the port oftenest assigned to abjurors.
The time limit varied, being on occasions so brief, that
it must have been almost impossible for people on foot
to fulfil the condition : which was most probably what
the coroner had in view, for he would assign sometimes
different delays to different refugees for the same dis
tance. " The distance from York to Dover over London
Bridge was nearly 270 miles, and there are several entries
of eight days being the allotted time, thus maintaining
a rate of over 33 miles a day." '»
' " Statutes of the Realm," i. p. 250, text of uncertain date, but prob
ably of the reign of Edward II. AU this was clas.ified as " Abuses " by
the not very trustworthy author of the " Mirror for Justices " (Andrew
Home .''), early fourteenth century, cd. Whittaker and Maitland, Selden Soe ,
1895, p. 158. At aU events it was the law. According to " Fleta," lib.
i. cap. xxix, at the end of forty days in sanctuary, if the malefactors have
not abjured the kingdom, food must be refused to them, and they will no
longer be allowed to emigrate. On the road to the port, according to
the same, the felon wore a garb which would cause him to be recognized,
being " ungirt, un-shod, bare-headed, in his bare shirt, as if he were to be
hanged on the gallows, having received a cross in his hands," " discinctus
et discalceatus, capite discooperto, in pura tunica, tanquam in patibulo
suspendendus, accepta cruce in manibus." " Fleta " stated that he must
try to cross, till he got into water, not up to the knees, but up to the neck.
On the " Abjuratio Regni," see the capital article, with a complete biblio
graphy of the subject by Andre Reville, in the " Revue Historique,"
Sept. 1892.
= " The Sanctuaries and Sanctuary Seekers of Medieval England," by

lyo ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
In the church robbers found themselves side by side
with insolvent debtors. These before seeking refuge
were usually careful to make a general donation of all
their property, and the creditors who cited them to justice
remained empty handed. In 1379,' Richard II enacted
remedial legislation. During five weeks, once a week, the
debtor is to be summoned, by proclamation made at the
door of the sanctuary, to appear in person or by attorney
before the king's judges. If he does not choose to appear
justice shall take its course ; sentence will be passed, and
the property that he had given away will be shared
among the creditors.
. This, however, served, as usual, only for a time. In the
first years of the following reign the Commons are found
lamenting the same abuses. Apprentices who have plun
dered their masters, tradesmen in debt, robbers, flee to
St. Martin-le-Grand and live there in quiet on the money
they have stolen. They employ the leisure which this
peaceful existence leaves them in patiently forging " obli
gations, indentures, acquitances," imitating the signatures
and seals of honest city merchants and of other people.
Felons, murderers and thieves avail themselves of this
restful seclusion for preparing new crimes ; they go out
at night to commit them, and safely return in the morning
to their inviolate retreat. The king, apparently puzzled
as to what to do, when the abuse is so great and the privilege
the Rev. J. Charles Cox, quoting a coroner's roll of the time of Edward III.
London, 1911, p. 28.
' Statute 2 Rich. II, stat. 2, chap. 3. These frauds had been already
complained of under Edward III. A petition of the Commons in the
parliament of 1376-77 ( " Rolls of Parliament," U. p. 369), declares that
certain people, after having received money or merchandise on loan, and
having made a pretended gift of all their property to friends, " flee to West
minster, St. Martin's, or other such privileged places, and lie there a long
time, ... so long that the said creditors are only too pleased to take a
smaU part of their debt and release the rest." Then the debtors return
home, and their friends give them back their property.

RIGHT OF SANCTUARY 171
so sacred, vaguely promises that " reasonable remedy shall
be had." '
Some years later (a.d. 1447) the Goldsmiths' Com
pany of London was startled on finding that a quantity
of sham gold and silver plate and jewellery had been issued
from the privileged precincts of St. Martin-le-Grand's
sanctuary, to the great detriment of their own worshipful
company. They brought the facts to the notice of the
king, who wrote to the Dean recommending him to check
this abuse if possible : " Trustie and welbeloved, we
grete you wel, and let you to wote that we be informed
that there be divers persons dwellinge within our seinc-
tuarie of St. Martin's that forge and sell laton and coper,
some gilt and some sylverd for gold and silver, unto the
great deceipt of our lege people. . . . " ' The tone of
the king's letter is very moderate ; he seems to write
only to please the Goldsmiths' Company, while realizing
that he is powerless in the matter, and that his recom
mendations will come to nothing.
A priest who took refuge in a church was not obliged
to quit England ; he swore that he was a priest, and
" enjoyed ecclesiastic privilege, according to the praise
worthy custom of the kingdom." 3 But the church, who
accorded to all comers the benefit of sanctuary, reserved
to herself the power of removal from it. " In this year
(1320), a woman who was named Isabel of Bury, killed
the priest of the church of All Saints, near London Wall,
and she remained in the same church five days, so that
the Bishop of London issued his letter that the church
would not save her, wherefore shq was brought out of
the church to Newgate and was hanged on the third day
afterwards." 4
' See Appendix X, p. 435.
2 A. J. Kempe, " Historical Notices of . . . St. Martin le Grand,"
London, 1825, p. 135.
3 Statute 9 Ed. II, cap. 15.
4 "Croniques de London," Camden Society, 1884, p. 42.

172 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
In those days, when riots and rebellions were not
uncommon, the right of sanctuary might be valuable for
any one ; reformers like Wyclif vainly protested against
this exorbitant but useful custom.' A bishop even, how
ever sacred his person, might have to spur his horse and
fly towards a church to save his head. The Bishop of
Exeter tried and failed when Isabella and her son came
to overthrow Edward II : * " The same day came one
Sir Walter de Stapleton, who was Bishop of Exeter, and
the king's treasurer the previous year, riding to his house
in Elde Deanes lane to his dinner, and there he was pro
claimed traitor ; and he seeing that fled on his horse
towards the church of St. Paul's, and was there met and
quickly unhorsed, and brought to Cheap, and there he
was stripped and his head cut off."
Under Richard III might be seen a queen and a king's
son refuse to quit the sacred enclosure of Westminster,
in which their lives were safe, thanks to the sanctity of
the place. Sir Thomas More has left in his history of
the usurper, the first real history in the national language,
a moving picture of the plucky defence of Edward IV's
widow and of the persistent efforts of Richard to snatch
the second child of the late king from the abbey. To
reiterated demands the queen replied : "In what place
coulde I recken him sure, if he be not sure in this the
sentuarye whereof was there never tiraunt yet so develish,
that durst presume to breake. . . . For soth he hath
founden a goodly glose, by whiche that place that may
defend a thefe, may not save an innocent." 3 The " goodly
glose " of Richard III consisted simply in having the
right of sanctuary abolished. In a speech in favour of
' See Appendix X.
2 " Croniques de London," Camden Society, 1844, p. 52.
3 " The History of King Richard the Thirde (unfinished), writen
by Master Thomas More, than one of the Under Sherriffs of London :
aljout the yeare of our Lorde, 1513," "Workes," London, 1557. Re
printed by S. W. Singer, Chiswick, 1821, p. 55.

RIGHT OF SANCTUARY 173
the measure, which was aimed especially at the places
of refuge of St. Paul's and Westminster, the Duke of
Buckingham is represented by More drawing a very
lively as well as an exact picture of the disorders there :
" What a rabble of theves, murtherers, and malicious
heyghnous traitours, . and that in twoo places specyallye.
. . . Mens wyves runne thither with theyr housebandes
plate, and saye, thei dare not abyde with theyr housebandes
for beatinge. Theves bryng thyther theyr stolen goodes,
and there lyve thereon. There devise thei newe rolDeries ;
nightlye they steale out, they robbe and reve, and kyll,
and come in again as though those places gave them not
only a safe garde for the harme they have done, but a
license also to doo more." '
This privilege endured, however, and even survived
the Reformation ; but from that hour it was less respected.
Lord Chancellor Bacon speaks of the sanctuary of Coin-
ham, near Abingdon, as being considered " insufficient "
for traitors, under Henry VII ; several political criminals
who had taken refuge there, were seized, therefore, and
one of them was executed. ^ Sanctuaries were suppressed,
legally at least, in the twenty-first year of the reign of
James I : " And be it alsoe enacted by the authoritie of
this present parliament that no sanctuarie or priviledge
' " The History of King Richard the Thirde," pp>. 44, 45. A list
of the " contents " of the same Westminster sanctuary, in 1532, has been
printed by the Rev. J. C. Cox, showing that " there were then fifty fugitive;,
including one woman under the protection of the abbey, as life prisoners,
one of whom had been there for twenty years. Sixteen were there for
felonies, probably all robberies, eleven for murder or homicide, eighteen
for debt, and two for sacrilege," the church having particular merit in pro
tecting the latter. One was a priest : " Sir James Whytakere, preste, for
murdre " ; some were there for a matter so small as to inspire pity :
" John ap HoweU for felony ; a poore mane, for stellynge of herrings."
"Sanctuaries," 1911, pp. 72 ff.
2 " History of the reign of King Henry VII," Ellis and Spedding's
edition of Bacon's Works, vol. vi. p. 43. Bacon says that Henry " was
tender in the privilege of sanctuaries, though they wrought him much
mischief" (p. 238).

174 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
of sanctuary shal be hereafter admitted or allowed in any
case." ' But they lingered on in England as well as
on the continent. Cromwell complains, in one of his
most famous speeches, of the difficulties his Government
sometimes experience on that account when they have
to ask from foreign potentates that justice be done. He
alludes to the recent assassination of an English messenger,
and says : "It is the pleasure of the Pope at any time
to tell you that though the man is murdered, yet his
murderer has got into the sanctuary." Another proof
that, after the statute of James I, the right of sanctuary
did not fall entirely into disuse in England is that it had
to be re-abolished in 1697 ; sanctuaries are to be found
even so late as the reign of George I, when the one at
St. Peter's, Westminster, was demolished.
With all their penal severity, law and custom still
gave other encouragements to malefactors. They often
received charters of pardon which the royal chancery
willingly granted because they must be paid for, while
the Commons unweariedly renewed their complaints
against this abuse. The priest, John Crochille, states
to the king in parliament that while he was at the Court
of Rome he has been outlawed, and was imprisoned on
his return. The chancellor has granted him a charter
of pardon, but he is " so impoverished that he has not
wherewith to pay for the said charter." 2
Charters were thus given to the innocent for money,
and to " common felons and murderers " also, which
had two results : the number of brigands increased
by reason of their impunity, and men dared not bring
the most formidable criminals to justice for fear of seeing
them return pardoned and ready to wreak a terrible revenge.
Most unluckily, the interest that the great had in
I 21 James I, cap. 28, § 7 ; "Statutes," vol. iv. part U. p. 1237.
-»_ "Rolls of Pariiament," 21 Ed. Ill, vol. ii. p. 178. See also the
petition of the Commons in 1350-51, 25 Ed. Ill, vol. U. p. 229.

CHARTERS OF PARDON 175
the continuance of this abuse tended also to its maintenance.
In league with their retainers, they wanted to defend
them from justice as they themselves were defended by
them in the street or on the road ; and the best means
of saving these bravi from the consequences of some
assassination was to obtain or buy for them a charter of
pardon. The Commons knew it, and reminded the king
that often the protectors of such criminals secured charters
for them on the representation that these men were
abroad, occupied in fighting for the prince. The charter
once obtained, the malefactors returned and renewed their
ill-deeds, without fear of being troubled by any one.'
For all these reasons the traveller would not have
been prudent if he had not foreseen on starting the chance
of some untoward meeting, and if he had not armed himself
in consequence. This was such a recognized necessity that
the Chancellor of the University of Oxford allowed the
students, on the occasion of a journey, to carry arms,
otherwise strictly forbidden. ^
There was, then, at best, but moderate safety against
robbers, and there was not always much against the sheriff's
officers themselves. At a time when prowlers were so
numerous, it was enough to be a stranger in the district,
especially if it were night, to be sent to gaol on suspicion,
' " Our lord the king by untrue recommendations has several times
granted his charter of pardon to notorious robbers and to common mur
derers, when it is given him to understand that they are staying for his wars
beyond the sea, whence they suddenly return into their country to persevere
in their misdeeds." The king orders that on the charter shall be written
" the name of him who made the recommendation to the king ; " the judges
before whom this charter shaU be presented by the felon to have his liberty
shaU have the power to make inquiry, and if they find that the recommenda
tion is not weU founded, they shall hold the charter of non effect. " Rolls
of Parliament," vol. U. p. 253, a.d. 1353-
» Regulations of 13 13. "Munimenta Academica ; or documents
iUustrative of academical life and studies at Oxford," edited by H. Anstey,
London, 1868, Rolls Series, vol. i. p. 91. The penalty was prison and
the loss of the weapons.

176 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
as shown by a statute of Edward III.' Nothing more
general than the terms of this law ; the power to arrest
is almost unlimited : " Whereas, in the statute made at
Winchester in the time of King Edward, grandfather to
the king that now is, it is contained. That if any stranger
pass by the country in the night, of whom any have sus
picion, he shall presently be arrested and delivered to the
sheriff, and remain in ward till he be duly delivered ; and
because there have been divers manslaughters, felonies,
and robberies ^ done in times past, by people that be called
roberdesmen, wastors, and draw-latches . . ." whoever
suspects any to be one such, " be it by day or by night,"
shall cause him immediately to be arrested by the con
stables of the towns ; the man shall be kept in prison
till the justices of gaol delivery come down, and meanwhile
inquiry shall be made.
Think now of a stranger passing through the town
by night ; some constable feels suspicious and wants to
arrest him ; imagining himself already in prison " till
the justices come down," the man runs away instead of
allowing himself to be taken. The statute has provided
for his case. 3 " If they will not obey the arrest, hue
and cry shall be levied upon them, and such as keep the
watch shall follow with hue and cry with all the town,
and the towns near, and so hue and cry shall be made
from town to town until that they be taken and delivered
I 5 Edward III, cap. 14.
2 A characteristic example of thief-catching, the man being a vagabond,
is in Thorold Rogers : William atte Lane had " feloniously bereft Richard
[de Herbarton] of a striped gown, worth ten shiUings." Richard ran after
him, " cum hutesio et clamore," and the man was caught " by the bailiff
of the liberty of Holywell, Oxford." WiUiam pleaded not guilty and
asked for a jury, " ponit se super patriam." The jury found him guUty,
ordered that he restitute the govm to Richard, and as he had no goods to
make atonement, and was " a vagabond belonging to no ward," he be hanged,
" suspendatur," (Dec. 8, 1337); the marginal note " susp." shows that
he was actually hanged. " Hist, of Agriculture," ii. 665.
3 Statute of Winchester, 13 Ed. I, cap. 4.

HUE AND CRY 177
to the sheriff"." ' A singular picture : night wraps in
its shadows the crooked lanes of the unlit city ; the
stranger is perhaps a robber, perhaps an honest man,
who has lost his way, not knowing the place ; his fault
is not to be within doors by curfew ; he gropes his way
as best he can ; the watch perceives and challenges
him ; fearing the result he takes to his heels, and behold !
the hue and cry begins, the watch runs, the town wakes
up, lights appear, and one after the other the more zealous
join in the chase. If the town is fortified, the postern
gates have long been closed, and he will be surely taken.
Scarcely can he hope to cast himself into some unshut
doorway at a turning of the street, behind which he will
cower, listening with trembling hand and beating heart
to the watch who pass heavily along at a charging pace,
followed by a crowd of furious shouters. The number
of steps lessen, and the shouts become fainter, then die
away, lost in the depths of the city.
If the place is not important enough to be enclosed
by walls, the first thought of the fugitive will be to gain
the open, and then he must not fear marshes, ditches,
hedges ; he must know how, at a bend of the ground,
to leave the high-road and profit by any place where the
Statute of Winchester has been negligently applied. But
for that he is lost, the constables follow, the town follows,
the " cry " continues, and at the next village the scene of
the start will begin over again. The inhabitants, warned
by the clamour, light their lanterns, and see, they are
already in the chase. Before he reaches the end of the high-
street some peasant will be found on_ the alert, ready to
bar the passage of the road to him. All have an interest
in it, all have been robbed, or their friends, or relatives ;
' " Clamor patris " in the Latin texts, " Fleta " for example ; " clameur
de haro " in France, where the practice existed even before the time of
Childebert, sixth century, and was stiU in use, in Normandy at least, until
the Revolution. See above, p. 114, note I.
12

178 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
someone of their kin may have been wounded or mur
dered on the road as he returned from market. Every
one has heard of such misfortunes, and feels himself
personally menaced. Hence this zeal in joining the chase
with the hue and cry, and the conviction that, running so
hard and making so many folk run, the fugitive must be
a famous brigand ready for the gibbet.'
' This power of running down the first comer was, like many prac'.ices
of the time, at once a guarantee for public safety and a dangerous
arm in the hands of felons. Robbers used it, and it happened sometimes
that they imprisoned by this means their own victims. AUsot, wife of
Henry of Upatherle, sets forth to the king that her husband was made
prisoner by the Scotch at the battle of Stirling, remained their captive more
than a year, then returned after having paid forty pounds ransom. In
his absence, Thomas of Upatherle and Robert of Prestbury seized on the
fields which he possessed at Upatherle, divided them, pulled down the
houses and acted as the owners, taking to their own homes all the goods they
could move. The prisoner's return surprised them ; as soon as they knew
that he had re-appeared on his lands, " the said Thomas, by false agreement
between him and the said Robert, raised hue and cry on the said Henry
and put upon him that he had robbed him (Thomas) of his chattels to
the value of ^£100." They were believed ; " the said Henry was taken
and imprisoned in Gloucester castle for a long time," waiting for the coming
of the justices, exactly as the statute said. Henry recovered his liberty
in the end, and obtained a writ against his enemies ; but they brought force
and came to meet their victim, " and beat the said Henry in the town of
Gloucester, that is they bruised his two arms, both his thighs, and both
his legs, and his head on both sides, and quite wrecked and vilely treated
his body, so that he barely escaped death." The king's reply is rot satis
factory : " If the husband be alive, the plaint is his, if he be dead the wife's
plaint is nothing." " Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 35, a.d. 1330.

PART II
LAY WAYFARERS

AN ADVENTURE SEEKER.
[From the MS. 2 B. vii ; English ; early Fourteenth Century.)

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

" ^i ne s^ ad-venture n^a chenjal ni mule, ce dist
Salomon. — S^iii trop s' ad-venture perd clu-val ct
muk, respondit Malcon.'^ Vie de GARfiAKxuA.

WE have seen the aspect and usual condition of
English roads ; we must now take separately the
principal types of the wandering class and see
what sort of a life the wayfarer led, and what was his
importance in society or in the State.
Wayfarers belonging to civil life were, in the first place,
quacks and drug-sellers, glee-men, tumblers, minstrels, and
singers ; then messengers, pedlars, and itinerant chap
men ; lastly, outlaws, thieves of all kinds, peasants out
of bond or perambulating workmen, and beggars. To
ecclesiastic life belonged preachers, mendicant friars, and
those strange dealers in indulgences called pardoners.
Lastly there were palmers and pilgrims, whose journeyings

l82

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

had a religious object, but in whose ranks, as in Chaucer's
book, clerk and lay were mingled.
Many of these individuals, the friars for instance,
had, it is true, a resting-place, but their existence was
spent, for the greater part, on the roads ; when they left
their abode their purpose was not to reach this or that
place, they had no fixed itinerary, but spent their time
in ceaseless rambles about the country, begging as they
went. They had, in the long run, caught the manners
and the language of true nomadic wayfarers, and in
common opinion were generally confounded with them ;
they belonged to that caste or family of beings.
As for the strange race which we still see at the present
day wandering from country to country, and which, later
than any, will represent among us the caste of wanderers,
it had not yet made its appearance in the British world,
and are outside the limits of the present work. The
Bohemians or Gipsies remained entirely unknown in
England till the fifteenth century.

BLIND BEGGAR AND HIS DOG.
{From the MS. lo E. IV.)

^S-v.,^

" THER WAS ALSO A DOCTOUR OF PHISIK " (cHAUCER's DOCTOR).
[From the EUesmere MS.)

CHAPTER I
HERBALISTS, CHARLATANS, MINSTRELS,
JUGGLERS, AND TUMBLERS
THE most popular of all the wanderers were naturally
the most cheerful, or those held to be the most
beneficent. These latter were the folks with a
universal panacea, very numerous in the Middle Ages ;
they went about the world selling health. They estab
lished themselves in the village green, or the market place,
on holidays, spreading a carpet or a piece of cloth on the
ground ; they displayed their drugs, and began to harangue
the people. Their numbers go diminishing nowadays,
for the laws are more, and more unkind to them, but they
have not yet entirely disappeared, so natural to man
183

1 84 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
are credulity and the longing for health. One may still
hear at the present day discourses not very different from
those they spoke in the fourteenth century in England,
France, or Italy ; their profession is one that has changed
less than any. In the thirteenth century the herbalist of
Rutebeuf spoke like Ben Jonson 's mountebank of the
seventeenth, like the charlatan who yesterday a few
steps from our door attracted the crowd to his trestle,
limiting however his sales, on account of the churlish
ness of the legislator, to tonics, tooth pastes and the
like. Big words, marvellous tales, praise of their noble
and distant origin, enumeration of the extraordinary cures
they have made, ostentatious display of an unbounded
devotion to the public good, and of entire pecuniary dis
interestedness : all this is found, and always will be found,
in the talk of these insinuating itinerants, as it is also found
to-day in the advertisements, on walls or in newspapers,
of wondrous cures discovered by a priest, by a convent, by
a gentleman of worth and disinterestedness ; which adver
tisements have, to some extent, replaced the itinerant healer
of olden times.
" Good people," said Rutebeuf 's medicinal herb-
seller six hundred years ago, " I am not one of those poor
preachers, nor one of those poor herbalists who stand
in front of churches with their miserable ill-sown cloak,
who carry boxes and sachets and spread out a carpet.
Know that I am not one of these ; but I belong to a lady
whose name is Madame Trote de Salerno, who makes a
kerchief of her ears, and whose eyebrows hang down as
silver chains behind her shoulders : know that she is the
wisest lady that is in all the four parts of the world. My
lady sends us into different lands and countries, into
Apulia, Calabria, Burgundy, into the forest of Ardennes
to kill wild beasts in order to extract good ointments from
them, and give medicine to those who are ill in body. . . .
And because she made me swear by the saints when I

HERBALISTS 185
parted from her, I will teach you the proper cure for worms,
if you will listen. Will you listen ?
"... Take off your caps, give ear, look at my herbs
which my lady sends into this land and country ; and
because she wishes the poor as well as the rich to have
access thereto, she told me that I should make penny
worths of them, for a man may have a penny in his purse
who has not five pounds ; and she told and commanded
that I might take pence of the current coin in the land
and country wherever I should come. . . .
" These herbs, you will not eat them ; for there is
no ox in this country, no charger, be he never so strong,
who if he had a bit the size of a pea upon his tongue would
not die a hard death, they are so strong and bitter. . . .
You will put them three days to sleep in good white wine ;
if you have no white take red, if you have no red take fine
clear water, for one may have a well before his door who
has not a cask of wine in his cellar. If you breakfast
from it for thirteen mornings you will be cured of your
various maladies. For if my father and mother were in
danger of death and they were to ask of me the best herb
I could give them, I should give them this. This is how
I sell my herbs and my ointments ; if you want any, come
and take them ; if you don't, let them alone." '
This herbalist was of those early maligned in France
and England by royal ordinances for the illegal practice
of medicine. Philip the Fair in 13 11, John the Good
in 1352, had issued severe decrees against them. They
were berated with being " ignorant of men's temperament,
of the time and mode of administering, of the virtues of
medicines, above all, of laxative ones in which lies danger
of death." These people " often come from abroad," go
through town and suburbs, and venture to administer to
the confiding sick, " clisteria multum laxativa et alia
' " Diz de I'Erberie." " CEuvres completes de Rutebeuf," Jubinal's
edition, 1874, vol. U. p. 58.

1 86 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
eis illicita," ^ at which the royal authority was justly
indignant. In England the itinerant drug-sellers had no better
reputation ; the popular songs, satires and farces always
show them associating in taverns with the meanest rabble,
and using — true to nature — the most ridiculous rant.
Master Brundyche's man, in a play of the fifteenth century,
thus prepares the minds of the hearers for the advent of
the " leech," his master, deriding both :
What dysease or syknesse y* ever ye have.
He wyl never leve yow tylle ye be in your grave.^
To have an idea of what their recipes might be, one
must recall what the medicine was that the statutes of
the kingdom protected. John of Gaddesden, court doctor
under Edward II, got rid of the marks of the small-pox
by wrapping the sick man in red cloths, and he thus cured
the heir to the throne himself.3 He had for a long time
been troubled how to cure stone : " At last," says he,
in his " Rosa Anglica," " I bethought myself of collecting
' Isambert, " Recueil General des anciennes lois Frangaises," vol. iii.
p. i6, and iv. p. 676.
2 " The Play of the Sacrament," " Philological Society Transactions,"
ed. Whiteley Stokes, i860, p. 127.
3 " Let scarlet cloth be taken, and let him who is suffering small-pox
be entirely wrapped in it or in some other red cloth ; I did thus when the
son of the illustrious King of England suffered from small-pox ; I took
care that all about his bed should be red, and that cure succeeded very
well." Original in Latin, " Joannis Anglici, Praxis Medica Rosa Anglica
dicta," Augsburg, 1595, Ub. ii. p. 1050.
To which Gaddesden, I now make humble apologies : for since the
above lines were written years ago, modern discoveries, those especially of
Niels Finsen, of Copenhagen, a man of the truest worth, whom I saw
at work, have justified him. Red light, it has been found, really has an
influence on the healing of the scars left by small-pox, and even of the
disease itself. So, biding the time when his beetle remedy, mentioned
next, may prove operative too, I hold Gaddesden justified in turning, from
above, the laugh on his deriders : and I submit to the penance in the
same contrite spirit as Dr. Johnson once did at Uttoxeter.

ITINERANT QUACKS 187
a good number of those beetles which in summer are found
in the dung of oxen, also of the crickets which sing in the
fields. I cut off the heads and the wings of the crickets
and put them with the beetles and common oil into a pot ;
I covered it and left it afterwards for a day and night in
a bread oven. I drew out the pot and heated it at a
moderate fire, I pounded the whole and rubbed the sick
parts ; in three days the pain had disappeared " ; under
the influence of the beetles and the crickets the stone had
broken into bits.' It was almost always thus, by a sudden
illumination, bethinking himself of beetles or of some
thing else, that the learned man discovered his most effi
cacious remedies : Madame Trote de Salerno never
confided to her agents in the various parts of the
world the secret of more marvellous and unexpected
recipes. The law, however, made a clear distinction between
a court physician and a quack of the cross-ways. Kings
and princes had their own healers, attached to their persons,
whom they trusted more than they did their ministers.
Securing by indentures of 1372 and 1373 the services
of " frere William de Appleton, phisicien et surgien,"
and of " Maistre Johan Bray," granting them forty marks
yearly pension with the " bouche en court," or right to be
fed at his tables, and other advantages, John of Gaunt,
" roy de Castille," was careful to bind those men of
learning to attend on him " in peace and in war, so long
as they lived," a pledge which his brother. King Edward,
never exacted from his chancellors. A Gaddesden had
the support of an established reputation to apply any
medicament to his patients, and he offered the warranty
of his high position. He had studied at Oxford, and he
was an authority ; a grave physician like Chaucer's
" doctour," who had grown rich during the plague, his
wealth increasing his repute —
' " Rosa Anglica," vol. i. p. 496.

1 88 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
"For gold in physik is a cordial,"
had not neglected to pore over the works of " Gatesden.
With lesser book-knowledge but an equal ingenuity,
the wandering herbalist was not so advantageously known :
he could not, like the royal physician, rely on his good
reputation and his " bouche en court " to make his patients
swallow glow-worms, rub them with beetles and crickets,
or give them " seven heads of fat bats " ' as remedies.
The legislator kept his eye on him. In the country, like
most of the other wayfarers, the man nearly always found
means to escape the rigour of the laws ; but in towns the
risk was greater. The unhappy Roger Clerk was sued in
1 3 8 1 for the illegal practice of medicine in London, because
he tried to cure a woman by making her wear a certain
parchment on her bosom. Though such a nostrum could
not possibly be more hurtful than the use of fat bats, he
was carried to the pillory " through the middle of the city,
with trumpets and pipes," on a horse without a saddle,
his parchment and a whetstone round his neck, unseemly
pottery hanging round his neck and down his back, in
token that he had lied.^
Uneasy at the increase of these abuses, Henry V issued
in 142 1 an Ordinance against the meddlers with physic and
surgery, " to get rid of the mischiefs and dangers which
have long continued within the kingdom among the people
by means of those who have used the art and practice of
physic and surgery, pretending to be well and sufficiently
taught in the same arts, when of truth they are not so."
Henceforth there would be severe punishments for all
practitioners who have not been approved in their speciality,
" that is to say, those of physic by the universities, and
the surgeons by the masters of that art." 3 The mischief
' A remedy for diseases of the spleen (" Rosa AngUca ").
2 " Memorials of London," documents relating to the thirteenth, four
teenth and fifteenth centuries, edited by H. Riley, London, 1868, p. 466.
3 " L'ordinance encontre les entremettours de fisik et de surgerie,"
" Rolls of Parliament," 9 Hen. V, vol. iv. p. 130.

QUACKS AND DOCTORS 189
continued just as before ; which seeing, in order to give
more authority to the medicine approved by the State,
Edward IV, in the first year of his reign, erected the Com
pany of Barbers of London using the faculty of surgery,
into a corporation.'
The Renaissance came and found barbers, quacks,
empirics, and sorcerers continuing to prosper on British
soil, and still the subject of song, satire and play. John
Heywood's Pothecary is a lineal descendant of Rutebeuf's
herbalist ; he sells a wonderful Syrapus de Byzansis, and
advertises it in such a way that, anything that happens,
he is right :
"These be the thynges that breke all stryfe
Betweene mannes sycknes and his lyfe ;
From all payne these shall you delever
And set you even at reste for ever." -
Henry VIII deplored the hold those men kept on
the common people, and on some of their betters
too ; he considered it his duty to enact new rules.
" The science and connyng of physyke and surgerie,"
said the king in his statute, " to the perfecte know
lege wherof bee requisite bothe grete lernyng and ripe
experience, ys daily within this Royalme exercised by a
grete multitude of ignoraunt persones, of whom the grete
partie have no maner of insight in the same nor in any
other kynde of lernyng ; some also can no lettres on the
boke, soofarfurth that common artificers, as smythes,
wevers, and women boldely and custumably take upon
theim grete curis and thyngys of great difficultie, in the
which they partely use sorcery and which-crafte, partely
applie such medicine unto the disease as be verey noyous
and nothyng metely therfore, to the high displeasoure
' Their charter of 1461 is given in Report and Appendix of the City
Liveries' Commission, 1884, vol. iU. p. 74. [L. T. S.]
2 "The Foure P." London, 1545.

190 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
of God . . . and destruccion of many of the kynge's liege
people, most specially of them that cannot descerne the
uncunnyng from the cunnyng." ' The examples above
have shown how difficult it must often have been to
" descerne " between them.
Consequently, the king continues, every one who
may wish to practise in London or seven miles round,
must previously submit to an examination before the
bishop of that city, or before the Dean of St. Paul's,
assisted by four " doctors of phisyk." In the country
the examination will take place before the bishop of
the diocese or his vicar-general. In 1540, the same
prince united the corporation of the barbers and the
college of surgeons, and granted each year to the new
association the bodies of four condemned criminals " for
anathomies." Hardly were all these privileges conceded than doubts
filled the mind of the legislator himself, and who, it may
be wondered, did he regret .'' precisely those old unregis
tered quacks, those possessors of infallible secrets, those
village empirics so harshly treated in the statute of 1 5 1 1 .
A new law was enacted, which is but one long enumeration
of the guilty practices of qualified doctors ; they poison
their clients as thoroughly as the quacks of old, the
chief difference is that they take more for it, refusing
even to interfere if the patient is poor :
" Mynding oonelie theyre owne lucres, and nothing
the profite or ease of the diseased or patient, .[they] have
sued, troubled and vexed divers honest persones aswell
men as woomen, whome God hathe endued with the
knowledge of the nature, kinde, and operacion of certeyne
herbes, rotes, and waters, . . . and yet the saide persones
have not takin any thing for theyre peynes and cooning,
but have mynistred the same to the poore people oonelie
for neighbourhode and Goddes sake, and of pite and
¦ Statute 3 Hen. VTTL cap. 11.

CHARLATANS 191
charytie ; and it is nowe well knowen that the surgeons
admytted wooll doo no cure to any persone, but where
they shall knowe to be rewarded with a greater soome
or rewarde than the cure extendeth unto, for in cace they
wolde mynistre theyre coonning to sore people unre
warded, there shoulde not so manye rotte and perishe to
deathe for lacke of helpe of surgery e as dailie doo."
Besides, in spite of the examinations by the Bishop of
London, " the most parte of the persones of the said
crafte of surgeons have small coonning." For which
cause all the king's subjects who have, " by speculacion
or practyse," knowledge of the virtues of plants, roots,
and waters, may as before, notwithstanding enactments
to the contrary, cure any malady apparent on the surface
of the body, by means of plasters, poultices, and oint
ments " within any parte of the realme of Englande, or
within any other the kinges dominions." '
A radical change, as we see ; the secrets and " specu-
lacions " of country people were no longer those of
sorcerers, but precious recipes which they had received
from God by intuition ; the poor, subject to die without
a doctor, rejoiced, the quacks breathed once more — but
were led again onto the boards of the comic stage just
as before. Ben Jonson, that bold pedestrian who walked
all the way from London to Scotland, and who, in his long
rambles through villages or cities, had become familiar
with the variegated characters haunting their market places,
painted, in his turn, the portrait of the " mountebank
doctor," one of the best, not better however than Rute
beuf's, and very similar to it, for, as we said, the type
passed on from century to century, unchanged. ^
Old Ben, as usual, paints from life, having seen and
heard more than once at Bartholomew and other fairs
the drug-seller pacing his scaffold and exclaiming, " O,
health, health ! the blessing of the rich ! the riches of the
' Statutes 32 Hen. VIII, cap. 42 ; 34 and 35 Hen. VIII, cap. 8.

192 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
poor ! who can buy thee at too dear a rate, since there is
no enjoying this world without thee." Upon which the man
makes game of the despicable " asses " his rivals, boasts
of his incomparable panacea, into which enters a little
human fat, which is worth a thousand crowns, but which
he will part with for eight crowns, no, for six, finally for
sixpence. A thousand crowns is what the cardinals
Montalto and Farnese and his friend the Grand Duke
of Tuscany have paid him, but he despises money and
he makes sacrifices for the people. Likewise he has a
little of the powder which gave beauty to Venus and to
Helen ; one of his friends, a great traveller, found it in
the ruins of Troy and sent it him. This friend also sent
a little of it to the French Court, but that portion had
become " sophisticated," and the ladies who use it do
not obtain from it such good results.'
Three years later, an English traveller, finding him
self at Venice, was filled with wonder at the talk of the
Italian mountebanks, and describing them, he too, from
life, gave another copy of the same immutable original.
" Truely," wrote Coryat, " I often wondered at many of
these natural orators. For they would tell their tales
with such admirable volubility and plausible grace, even
extempore, and seasoned with that singular variety of
elegant jests and witty conceits, that they did often strike
great admiration into strangers that never heard them
before." They sell " oyles, soueraigne waters, amorous
songs printed, apothecary drugs, and a common-weale of
other trifles. ... I saw one of them holde a viper in his
hand, and play with his sting a quarter of an houre together,
and yet receive no hurt. . . . He made us all beleeve
that the same viper was lineally descended from the gener
ation of that viper that lept out of the fire upon St. Paul's
hand, in the island of Melita, now called Malta." ^
' "The Fox," Act II, sc. i (1605).
* " Coryat's Crudities," reprinted from the edition of 16 11, London,
1776, vol. ii. pp. 50, 53. Coryat set out from Dover, 14 May, 1608.

MOUNTEBANKS 193
No doubt the loquacity, the volubility, the momen
tary conviction, the grace, the insinuating tone, the light,
winged gaiety of the southern charlatan were not found
so fully or so charmingly at the festivals of old England.
These festivals were, however, merry and boisterous,
attended by large crowds, among which moved many an
artful character so full of jest and guile that Shakespeare
thought them worthy of immortality ; he gave it them
indeed in creating, as a model of those men whose
" revenue is the silly cheat," his incomparable " Autolycus,
a rogue." Country labourers went in numbers to these meetings,
to stand jests which, aimed at them, were an amusement
even to themselves, and to buy some drug which would do
them good : they are to be seen there still. At the present
day they continue to collect before the vendors of cures
for the toothache and other troubles. Certificates abound
round the booth ; it seems as though all the illustrious
people in the world must have been benefited by the dis
covery ; the man now addresses himself to the rest of
humanity. He talks, gesticulates, gets excited, leans
over with a grave tone and a deep voice. The peasants
press around, gaping with inquisitive eye, uncertain if
they ought to laugh or to be afraid, and in the end get
confident. The large hand fumbles in the new coat,
the purse is drawn forth with an awkward air, the piece
of money is held out and the medicine received, while
the shining eye and undecided physiognomy say plainly
that the cunning and the habitual practical sense are here
at fault ; that these good souls, clever and invincible in
their own domain when it is a question of a sheep or a
cow, are the victims of every one in an unknown land,
the land of medical lore. The vendor bestirs himself,
and now, as formerly, triumphs over indecision by means
pf direct appeals.
In England the incomparable Goose Fair at Notting-
13

194 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
ham should be chosen as the place to see these spectacles,
which shine there in all their infinite variety, with quacks
as racy as those of pristine days, scenes reminding one
of Rubens' great " Kermesse " at the Louvre, and at
every turn and before every shop living confutations of
St. Evremond and others' ideas of the temper of the
English, ever lost in their thoughts, as if merry England
were no more.^
Greater still was, in the Middle Ages, the popularity
of those wayfarers, numerous too at the Goose Fair, who
came not to cure, but to amuse, and who, if they did not
offer remedies for diseases, at least brought forgetfulness
of troubles ; the minstrels, tumblers, jugglers, and singers.
Minstrels and jongleurs, under different names, exercised
the same profession, that is, they chanted songs and
romances to the accompaniment of their instruments, as
is still done in the East, in Persia for instance, where
poems are not told but chanted, in various keys according
to the subject. At a time when books were rare, and
the theatre, properly so called, did not exist, poetry and
music travelled with the minstrels and gleemen along the
roads ; such guests were always welcome. They were
to be found at every feast, wherever there were rejoicings ;
it was expected from them, as from wine or beer, that care
would be lulled to sleep, and merriment would replace it.
They had many ways to fulfil the expectation, some digni
fied, some not. Of the first sort was the singing and
reciting, either in French or English, of the loves and
deeds of ancient heroes.
This was a grand part to play, one held in much
reverence ; the harpers and minstrels who arrived at
the castle gates, their heads full of war stories, or sweet
tales, or lively songs to excite laughter, " ad ridendum,"
were received with the highest favour. On their coming
they announced themselves without by some " murie
' Visited in 1875, not since.

MINSTRELS 195
singing " overheard in the house ; soon came the order
to bring them in ; they were ranged at one end of the
hall, and every one gave ear to them.' They preluded
on their instruments, and then began to sing. On what
subject ?
" Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old unhappy far off things
And battles long ago :
Or is it some more humble lay
Familiar matter of to-day ?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain
That has been and may be again .? " »
Like Taillefer at Hastings, they told of the prowess of
Charlemagne and of Roland, or they spoke of Arthur,
or of the heroes of the wars of Troy, undoubted ancestors
of the Britons of England :
" Men lykyn jestis for to here.
And romans rede in diuers manere
Of Alexandre the conqueroure.
Of Julius Cesar the emperoure,
Of Grece and Troy the strong stryf,
There many a man lost his lyf.

' Hom and his companions, in the romance of " King Horn," disguise
themselves as minstrels, and range themselves at the gate of Rymenhild's
castle : " Hi yeden bi the gravel
Toward the castel.
Hi gunne murie singe
And makede here gleowinge.
Rymenhild hit gan ihere
And axede what hi were :
Hi sede, hi weren harpurs.
And sume were gigours.
He dude Horn inn lat;
Right at halle gate, •
He sette him on a benche
His harpe for to clenche."
" King Hom," ed. J. R. Lumby, Early English Text Society, 1866,
1. 1465. ' Wordsworth, " The Solitary Reaper."

196 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Of Brute that baron bold of hond
The first conqueroure of Englond,
Of kyng Artour that was so riche,
Was non in his tyme him liche.

How kyng Charlis and Rowlond fawght
With Sarzyns nold they be cawght.
Of Tristrem and of Ysoude the swete
How they with love first gan m.ete.
Of kyng John and of Isombras,
Of Ydoyne and of Amadas,
Stories of diuerce thynggis
Of pryncis, prelatis, and of kynggis,
Many songgis of diuers ryme.
As english, frensh, and latyne," '
In the fourteenth century most of these old romances,
heroic, forceful, or touching, had been re-cast and put
into new language ; florid descriptions, complicated adven
tures, marvels and prodigies had been added to them ;
many had been turned into prose, and instead of being
sung they were read.== The lord listened with pleasure,
and his taste, palled by surfeit, caused him to take delight
in the strange entanglements with which every event
was henceforth enveloped. He now lived a more complex
life than formerly ; being more refined he had more
wants, and grand, simple pictures in poems like the
Song of Roland no longer satisfied his imagination :
he preferred variety to grandeur. The heroes of romance
' " Cursor Mundi," a Northumbrian poem of the fourteenth century,
edited by R. Morris for the Early English Text Society, vol. v. p. 165 1
and vol. i. p. 8.
^ It began to be customary to read aloud verses too, instead of singing
them. Chaucer foresees that his poem of " Troilus " m.ay be indifferently
read or sung, and he writes, addressing his book :
" So preye I to God, that non myswrite the,
Ne the mys-metere, for defaute of torge !
And red wher so thow be, or elles songe.
That thow be understonde, God I beseche!"
("Troilus," book v., 1. 18Q9.)

MINSTRELS 197
found harder and harder tasks imposed on them, and
were obliged to triumph over more and more marvellous
enchantments. As the hand became more alert the
modelling improved ; the softer-hearted heroes of amorous
adventures were endowed by the poet with that charm,
at once mystic and sensual, so characteristic of the sculp
tured figures of the fourteenth century. The author of " Sir
Gawayne " takes a scarcely concealed pleasure in describ
ing the visits which his knight receives, in painting his
lady, so gentle, so pretty, with easy motions and gay smile ;
he puts into his picture all his art, all his soul ; he finds
words which seem caresses, and verses which shine as
with a golden gleam.'
These pictures, not rare in the thirteenth century,
greatly multiplied in the fourteenth, but toward the end
thereof passed from the romance into the tale, or into
poems, half tale, half romance, such as the " Troilus "
of Chaucer. After many transformations the metrical
romance was gradually giving way to new forms and
styles which better suited the tastes of the hour. A
hundred vears earlier such a man as Chaucer would have
taken up the Arthur legends in his turn, and would have
written some splendid long-winded poetical romance for
the minstrels ; but he left us tales and lyric poems because
his own taste and that of the age were different, and he
felt that people were still curious but not enthusiastic
about old heroic stories, that few any longer followed
them with passion to the end, and that they were rather
made the ornament of libraries than the subject of daily
thought.^ Thenceforward men liked to find separately in
' " Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight," ed. R. Morris, Early English
Text Society, 1864, pp. 38, ff.
^ Brilliantly iUuminated manuscripts of romances continued, however,
to multiply; they were very weU paid for. Edward III bought, in
1 33 1, of Isabella of Lancaster, nun of Aumbresbury, a book of romance
for which he paid her ,^66 13s. 4d., which was an enormous sum. When
the king had this book he kept it in his own room (Devon's " Issues of the

198 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
ballads and in tales the lyric breath and the spirit of
observation formerly contained with all the rest in the
great metrical romances, the poetical summ^e of earlier
days ; and these, abandoned to the less expert of the
itinerant rhymers, became such wretched copies of the
old originals that they were the laughing-stock of people
of sense and taste.
Many of the grand French epics were thus abridged
and put into skipping, barren English verse, the epics
being out of fashion, their substitutes valueless. So, when
Chaucer, surrounded by his fellow pilgrims, favoured
them with a story of Sir Thopas, popular good sense,
personated by the host, rebelled, and the performance
was rudely interrupted. Yet from Sir Thopas to many
of the romances which ran the streets or the roads the
distance is small, and the laughable parody was hardly
more than a close imitation. Robert Thornton, in the
first half of the fifteenth century, copied from older
texts a good number of these remodelled romances. In
turning their pages one is struck by the excellence of
Chaucer's jesting, his caricature being almost a portrait.
These poems are all cut after one and the same pattern,
tripping and sprightly, with little thought and less senti
ment ; the cadenced stanzas march on, clear, easy, and
empty ; no constraint, no effort ; one may open and
close the book without a sigh, without regret, with no
positive weariness nor really- felt pleasure. Were it not
for the proper names, the reader might pass chancewise
from one romance to another without noticing the change.
Take no matter which, " Sir Isumbras " for example :
Exchequer," 1837, p. 144). Richard II (ibid. 213) bought a bible in
French, a " Roman de la Rose," and a " Roman de Perceval " for ^£28.
To give an idea of these prices we must recall, for example, that a few years
before Edward bought his book of romance, the inhabitants of London
entered in the City accounts £j los. for ten oxen, £4 for twenty pigs, and
^d for twenty-four swans, which they had given to the king. Year 1328,
Riley's "Memorials of London," 1868, p. 170.

MINSTRELS 199
after a prayer for form's sake, the rhymer vaunts the
valour of the hero, then praises a quality of especial value,
with which he was happily endowed, his fondness for
minstrels and his generosity towards them :
" He luffede glewmene weU in hauUe
He gafe thame robis riche of palle (fine cloth)
Bothe of golde and also fee ;
Of curtasye was he kynge,
Of mete and drynke no nythynge.
On lyfe was none so fre."
Isumbras, his wife, and his son, are without peers ;
he is the most valiant of knights, his wife the most lovely
of women : " I wille yow telle of a knyghte
That bothe was stalworthe and wyghte.
And worthily undir wede ;
His name was hattene syr Ysambrace."
So is also Sir Eglamour ;
" Y shalle telle yow of a knyght
That was bothe hardy and wyght.
And stronge in eche a stowre."
So is also Sir Degrevant :
" And y schalle karppe off a knyght
That was both hardy and wyght.
Sire Degrevaunt that hend hyght.
That dowghty was of dede." '

' The " Thornton Romances," edited by J. O. Halliwell for the Cam
den Society, pp. 88, 121, 177. The romances in this volume are, " Per
ceval," " Isumbras," " Eglamour," and " Degrevant " ; the longest scarcely
reaches 3,000 lines, " Isumbras '' not 1,000. The manuscript, which
is in Lincoln Cathedral, is a collection containing many other romances,
especially a " Life of Alexander," a " Mort d' Arthur," an " Octavian,"
and a " Diocletian," besides numerous prayers in verse, recipes for curing
toothache, prophecies of the weather, etc.

200 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
So is also Chaucer's Sir Thopas :
"... I wol telle verrayment
Of myrthe and of solas,
Al of a knyght was fair and gent
In batail and in tomament.
His name was Sir Thopas."
And though Sir Thopas almost comes within the
scope of the present work, being an adventure seeker,
" a knight auntrous," ever on his way, never sleeping in
a house — "And for he was a knight auntrous.
He nolde slepen in non hous.
But liggen in his hode ;
His bright helm was his wonger (pillow),"
yet must we abide by the ruling of mine host and leave
him alone : "No more of this for Goddes dignitee."
But, even at a comparatively late date, the inmate of
an out of the way castle usually proved more lenient. He
welcomed the minstrel, his verse and his viol as he wel
comed change ; he lent a complacent ear to his common
place romances, his ballads on every subject, his praise
of flowers, women, wine, spring, heroes and saints, his
goliardic dispraise of women,' monks and friars, his
tales of love or laughter, his patriotic songs the rarest of
all, for the Hundred Years War was for the English chiefly
a royal and not a national war, and this alone can explain
the scant place occupied in the songs of the time by Crecy
' From Golias, the type of the debauched and gluttonous prelate, made
famous by Latin poems attributed to Walter Map, twelfth century, ed.
Th. Wright, Camden Society, 1841; cf "The Cambridge Songs, a
Goliard's song book of the eleventh century," ed. Karl Breul, Cambridge,
1916.

MINSTRELS 201
and Poictiers, never mentioned by Chaucer, never men
tioned by Langland (who disapproved of the war), cele
brated only by one solitary songster known by name
¦ and otherwise unknown, the unimatated and ungifted
Laurence Minot.' The noble listened ; he had few
intellectual diversions ; he gave little time if any to reading,
which was not for him then an unmixed pleasure, and
needed effort ; there was no theatre for him to go to.
At long intervals only, when the great yearly feasts came
round, the knight might go, in company with the crowd,
to see Pilate and Jesus on the boards. There he found
sometimes not only the crowd but the king too. Richard II,
for example, witnessed a religious play or mystery in the
fourteenth year of his reign, and had ten pounds distri
buted among several clerks of London who had played
before him at Skinnerwell " the play of the Passion and of
the creation of the world." ^ A few years later he saw
the famous York plays, at the feast of Corpus Christi,
performed in the streets of that city.3 In ordinary times
the knight was only too happy to receive in his home
men of vast memory, who knew more verse and more
music than could be heard in a day.
The king himself liked their coming. He had them
sometimes brought up to him in his very chamber, where
he was pleased to sit and hear their music. Edward II
received four minstrels in his chamber at Westminster
and heard their songs, and when they went he ordered
twenty ells of cloth to be given them for their reward. 4
No one thought in those days of rejoicings without min
strels ; there were four hundred and twenty-six of them
' Help me God, my wit es then,
he says himself " Poems," ed. T. Hall, Oxford, 1887, p. 21.
' " Issues of the Exchequer," p. 244.
3 " Extracts from the Municipal Records of the City of York," by
Rob. Davies, London, 1843, p. 230.
4 Wardrobe Accounts ; " Archa:ologia," vol. xxvi. p. 342.

202 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
at the marriage of the Princess Margaret, daughter of
Edward I.' Edward III gave a hundred pounds to those
who were present at the marriage of his daughter Isabella,^
some figured also at his tournaments. 3 When a bishop
went on his pastoral rounds he was occasionally greeted
by minstrels, hired on purpose to cheer him ; they were
of necessity chosen among local artists, who were apt
to fiddle cheap music to his lordship. Bishop Swinfield,
in one of his rounds, gave a penny a piece to two minstrels
who had just played before him ; but on another occasion
he distributed twelve pence a piece.4
When men of importance were travelling they some
times had the pleasure of hearing minstrels at the inn,
and in that manner whiled away the long empty evenings.
In the curious manual already quoted, called " La maniere
de langage," composed in French by an Englishman of
the fourteenth century, the traveller of distinction is
represented listening to the musicians at the inn, and
mingling his voice at need with their music : " Then,"
says our author, " come forward into the lord's presence
the trumpeters and horn-blowers with their frestels (pipes)
and clarions, and begin to play and blow very loud, and
then the lord with his squires begin to move, to sway,
to dance, to utter and sing fine carols till midnight without
ceasing." 5
In great houses minstrels' music was the usual season
ing of meals. At table there are only two amusements,
' Thomas Wright, " Domestic Manners and Sentiments," 1862, p. 181.
» 40 Ed. Ill, Devon's " Issue Rolls of the Exchequer," p. 188.
3 See two examples of like cases in the introduction to the " Issue Roll
of Thomas de Brantingham," p. xxxix.
4 " Roll of Household Expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of
Hereford," ed. J. Webb, Camden Society, 1854—55, vol. i. pp. 152, 155.
On the condition of minstrels, jugglers, bear-wards, etc., in France, see e.g.
" Histoire feconomique de la Propriete, des Salaires . . . et de tous les
Prix," by Vicomte d'Avenel, Paris, 1914, vol. v. p. 264, and Bedier, " Les
Fabliaux," 1895, p. 389.
5 Ed. P. Meyer, in " Revue Critique," vol. x. (1870), p. 373.

MINSTRELS 203
says Langland, in his " Visions " : to listen to the min
strels, and, when they are silent, to talk religion and to
scoff at its mysteries.' The repasts which Sir Gawain takes
at the house of his host the Green Knight are enlivened
with songs and music. On the second day the amuse
ment extends till after supper ; they listen during the
meal and after it to many noble songs, such as Christmas
carols and new songs, with all possible mirth :
" Mony athel songez.
As coundutes of kryst-masse, and carolez newe.
With all the manerly merthe that mon may of telle."
On the third day,
" With merthe and mynstralsye, with metez at hor wylle,
Thay maden as mery as any men moghten." »
In Chaucer's " Squire's Tale," King Cambynskan
gives a " Feste so solempne and so riche
That in this worlde ne was ther noon it liche."
And this prince is shown sitting after the third course
among his nobles, listening to the music :
"... So bifelle after the thridde cours,
Whil that the kyng sit thus in his nobleye,
Herkyng his mynstrales her thinges pleye
Byfom him atte boord deliciously. . . ."
During all these meals the sound of the viol, the voice
of the singers, the " delicious things " of the minstrels,
were interrupted, it is true, by the crunching of the bones
' "Piers Plowman," Text C, pass. xii. U. 35-39.
2 " Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight," ed. R. Morris, Early EngUsh
Text Society, 1864, U. 484, 1652-1656, and 1952. In the same manner
Arthur, after an exploit by Gawain, sits down to table, " Wythe alle maner
of mete and mynstralcie bothe."

204 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
gnawed by the dogs under the tables, by the quarrels
of the same, or by the sharp cry of some ill-bred falcon ;
for many noblemen kept during dinner these favourite
birds on a perch behind them. Their masters, enjoying
their presence, were indulgent with the liberties they
took. The minstrels of Cambynskan are represented as
attached to his person ; those belonging to the King of
England also had permanent functions. The sovereign
was seldom without them, and even when he went abroad
was accompanied by them as well as by his hawks and
hounds, a complete orchestra. Henry V engaged eighteen,
who were to follow him to Guyenne and elsewhere.'
Their chief is sometimes called king or marshal of the
minstrels.^ On May 2, 1387, Richard II gave a pass
port to John Caumz (.? Camuz), " rex ministrallorum
nostrorum," who was setting out for a journey beyond
the sea. 3 On January 19, 1464, Edward IV grants
a pension of ten marks " to our beloved Walter Haliday,
marshall of our minstrels. "4 The Roll of Thomas Brant
ingham, treasurer to Edward III, bears frequent mention
of royal minstrels, to whom a fixed salary of seven pence-
halfpenny a day is paid. 5 King Richard II had in the
same manner minstrels in his pay, and enjoyed their music
' " This indenture, made 5 June in the 3rd year of our sovereign lord
King Henry the fifth since the Conquest, witnesseth that John Clyff, minstrel,
and 17 other minstrels, have received from our said lord the king, through
Thomas, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, treasurer of England, forty pounds
as their wages, to each of them i2d. a day for a quarter of a year, for serving
our said lord in the parts of Guyenne or elsewhere." Rymer's " Foedera,"
ed. 1704-32, year 141 5, vol. ix. p. 260.
' The chief of the minstrels of Beverley was caUed alderman. [L. T. S.]
3 " Fcedera," year 1387, vol. vii. p. 555. In Sir John Hawkins'
" History of Music," London, 1^93, vol. i. p. 193, John of Gaunt's charter
to the king of his minstrels in Tutbury, dated 4 Richard II, is given at length.
[L. T. S.]
4 " Foedera," year 1464, vol. xi. p. 512.
5 " Issue Roll of Thos. de Brantingham," ed. Devon, pp. 54—57 and
296-298. These pensions were granted for life.

MINSTRELS 205
when travelling. When he went for the last time to
Ireland he had to wait for ten days at Milford on account
of contrary winds. That French gentleman, Creton, who
was with him, and wrote afterwards a most interesting
account of what befell the unfortunate king during the
last year of his reign, states in his chronicle that the time
was merrily passed at Milford while expecting a change
in the weather, and that day and night they had music
and songs of minstrels.'
The richer nobles imitated, of course, the king, and
had their own companies, whom they allowed to play at
times in various parts of the country (as was the case
later with regular actors), and whom they supplied with
testimonial letters vouching for them and their artistic
ability.* The accounts of Winchester College under
Edward IV show that this college recompensed the ser
vices of minstrels belonging to the king, the Earl of
Arundel, Lord de la Ware, the Duke of Gloucester, the
[Earl] of Northumberland, and the Bishop of Winchester ;
these last often recur. In the same accounts, time of
Henry IV, mention is made of the expenses occasioned
by the visit of the Countess of Westmoreland, accompanied
by her suite. Her minstrels formed part of it, and a sum
of money was given them. 3
' " La feumes nous en joie et en depport
Dix jours entiers, atendant le vent nort
Pour nous partir.
Mainte trompette y povoit on oir
De jour, de nuit, menestrelz rctentir."
MS. Harl. 13 19, in the British Museum, printed in "Archaeologia,"
vol. XX. p. 297.
= Of which letters, models have come down to us, " and judging by
the lavish eulogy they employ, the minstrels themselves must have had a
hand in drawing them up." E. K. Chambers, " The Medieval Stage,"
Oxford, 1903, 2 vols., i. p. 53 ; three chapters on minstrels of great interest
and importance, beginning with a bibUography of the subject, i. 23.
3 Warton's "History of English Poetry," Hazlitt's edition, 1871,
ji. p. 98. John pf Gaunt orders £16 1 3s, 4d. to be paid to " various min-

2o6 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
When visiting towns and performing before the
citizens, itinerant troups made a collection among the
bystanders, having, however, themselves a fee to pay
for the privilege. A curious example of this is recorded
in John of Gaunt's register, where his seneschal of New-
castle-under-Lyme is ordered to see to it that 4d. be paid
to William de Brompton a burgess of that city and Margery
his wife, " by every minstrel coming there to make his
minstralcy against the feast of St. Giles the Abbot," and
that a payment be also made to the same for every bear
brought there to be baited, a regular inquest having
shown that such fees had been paid to that couple and
to Margery's ancestors from time immemorial.
Like lords and princes, from the early fifteenth century
at least, cities themselves had their troups of minstrels :
" London, Coventry, Bristol, Shrewsbury, Norwich,
Chester, York, Beverley, Leicester, Lynn, Canterbury,
had them, to name no others. They received fixed fees
or dues, wore the town livery and badge of a silver
scutcheon, played at all local celebrations and festivities
and were commonly known as waits." 2
Besides money and good meals, those musical wan
derers often received a variety of gifts, such as cloaks,
furred robes, and the like. Langland alludes more than
once to these largesses, which proves that they were
considerable, and he regrets that all this was not distri
buted to the poor who go, they too, from door to door,
and are the minstrels of God :

strels of his very dear cousin the count of Flanders," and ^^65 to various
heralds, etc., of " our most redoubted lord and father, the king at Eltham."
" John of Gaunt's Register," ed. S. A. Smith, 191 1, vol, ii. p. 279. Lang
land notices the good reception given, when they were travelling, to the
king's minstrels, in order to please their master, known to be sensible of
these marks of good will.
' November 26, 1372. " John of Gaunt's Register," ed. S. A. Smith,
1911, ii. 98.
* Chambers, ibid. i. 51.

MINSTRELS
' Clerkus and knyghtes ¦ welcometh kynges mynstrales.
And for love of here lordes • lithen hem at festes :
Much more, me thenketh ¦ riche men auhte
Have beggers by-fore hem ¦ whiche beth godes mynstrales.'

207

But his advice was not heeded, and long after his
time the minstrels continued to be admitted to the castle
halls. In erecting the hall the builder took
into account the probable visits of musicians,
and often raised a gallery for them above
the entrance door, opposite to the dais, the
place where the master's table was set.*
This custom long survived the Middle
Ages. At Hatfield a minstrels' gallery of
the seventeenth century adorns the hall of
that beautiful place, and is still, on great
occasions, put to the use it was originally
intended for.
The classic instrument of the minstrel
was the vielle, n kind of violin or fiddle with
a bow, something like ours, a drawing of
which, as used in the thirteenth century,
is to be found in the album of Villard de
Honnecourt. 3 It was delicate to handle, and
required much skill ; in proportion there
fore as the profession lowered, the good
performer on the vielle became rarer ; the
common tambourine or tabor, which needed
but little training, replaced the vielle, and
true artists complained of the music and the taste of the
' " Piers Plowman," Text C, pass. viii. 1. 97-
* See a drawing of such a gallery in a miniature reproduced by Eccles-
ton, " Introduction to English Antiquities; " London, 1847, p. 221. To
the sound of the minstrels' music four wild men or mummers are dancing
with contortions ; sticks lie on the ground, no doubt for their exercises ;
a barking dog is jumping between them.
3 " Album de ViUard de Honnecourt," edited by Lassus and Darcel,
1858, plate I.

PLAYING UPON
THE VIELLE.
[From the MS. 10
E.I V ; English;
early Fourteenth
Century.)

2o8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
day. It was a tabor that the glee-man of Ely wore at
his neck when he had his famous dialogue with the King
of England, which proved so bewildering for the monarch:
" He came thence to London ; in a meadow he met the
king and his suite ; around his neck hung his tabor,
painted with gold and rich azure." '
The minstrels played yet other instruments, the harp,
the lute, the guitar, the bag-pipe, the rota (a kind of small
harp, the ancient instrument of the Celts), and others.'
The presents, the favour of the great, rendered enviable
the lot of the minstrels ; they multiplied accordingly,
and the competition was great, which made the trade less
profitable. In the fifteenth century, the king's minstrels,
clever and able men, protested to their master against
the increasing audacity of the false minstrels, who
deprived them of the greater part of their revenues.
" Uncultured peasants," said the king, who sided with
his own men, " and workmen of different trades in our
kingdom of England have passed themselves off as min
strels ; some have worn our livery, which we did not
' " Si vint de sb. Loundres ; en un pree
Encontra le roy e sa meisnee ;
Entour son col porta soun labour,
Depeynt de or e riche azour."
" Le roi d'Angleterre et le jongleur d'Ely," edited with " La riote du
monde," by Francisque Michel, Paris, 1834, p. 28. — "' Fio/a. Save thee,
friend, and thy music : Dost thou live by thy tabor .'' " And the tabor
player, in " Twelfth Night " (iU. i) is the Clown.
2 At Exeter Cathedral may be seen many of the musical instruments
used in the fourteenth century, sculptured in the " Minstrels' Gallery,"
where angels are performing (see the plate). The instruments they use
have been identified by M. Carl Engel as being : the cittern, the bag-pipe,
the clarion, the rebec, the psaltery, the syrinx, the sackbut, the regals, the
gittem, the shalm, the timbrel, the cymbals. " Musical Instruments,"
South Kensington Museum Art Handbook, p. 113. [The duties of the
court minstrels of Edward IV are declared in the Black Book of the Orders
of that king's household (Harl. MS. 610, fol. 23), and their instruments
are enumerated ; " some vse trumpetts, some shalmes, some small pipes,
some are stringe-men." L, T. S.]

CiUcrn. Bagpipe. Clarion. Rebec. Psaltery. Syrinx. Sackbut. Regah. Gittem. Shalm. Timbrel. Cymbal,.
THE MINSTRELS' GALLERY AT EXETER. 1^- ^°9-
[Fourteenth Century.)

MINSTRELS 211
grant to them, and have even given themselves out to be
our own minstrels." By means of these guilty practices,
they extorted much money from the king's subjects, and
although they had no understanding nor experience of
the art, they went from place to place on festival days
and gathered all the profits which should have enriched
the true artists, those who had devoted themselves entirely
to their profession, and did not exercise any low trade.
The king, to protect his men against such unlawful
competition, authorized them to reconstitute and con
solidate the pre-existing gild of minstrels ; no one could
henceforth exercise this profession, whatever his talent,
if he had not been admitted into the gild. A power of
inquiry was granted to the members of the society, who
had the right to have false minstrels fined, the money
to be applied to candles lit in the chapel of the Holy Virgin
at St. Paul's and in the " royal free chapel of St. Anthony."
For a pious motive was associated then with most actions,
and minstrels, so badly treated by the generality of rehgious
writers, were in this case bound, says the king, to pray in
those two chapels for him while alive and for his soul when
dead, for his " dearest consort Elizabeth queen of Eng
land," and for the soul of his " dearest lord and father" ;
this till the end of time. Women were, as well as men,
admitted into the fraternity. '
Such was the will of the king ; in the same manner,
and without any better success, the price of bread and
the wage for a day's labour were lowered by statute, all
of which had but a limited and temporary effect.
I Rymer's " Fcedera," April 24, 1469. See Appendix XI. On
minstrels' gilds in various English cities, the Beverley one being perhaps
the most famous (none, however, possessing documentary proofs of its exist
ence so old as the French ones, the Paris gild, for example, which was reformed
in 1321 and lasted tiU 1776), see Chambers, " Mediceval Stage," ii. 258.
Having known various vicissitudes, the royal or London gild " still exists
as the Corporation of the Master, Wardens and Commonalty of the Art
and Science of the Musicians of London." Ibid. ii. 261.

212 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
The authorities had other reasons for watching over
singers and itinerant musicians ; while they showed
indulgence to the armed retainers of the great, they feared
the rounds made by those glee men with no other arms
than their vielle or tabor, but sowing sometimes strange
disquieting doctrines under colour of songs. These were
more than liberal, and went at times so far as to recommend
social or political revolt. The Commons in parliament
denounced by name, at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, the Welsh minstrels as fomentors of trouble and
causes of rebellion. Their political songs encouraged
the insurgents to resistance ; and parliament, who brack
eted them with ordinary vagabonds, knew well that in
having them arrested on the roads, it was not simple cut-
purses whom it sent to prison. " Item : That no westours
and rimers, minstrels or vagabonds, be maintained in
Wales to make kymorthas or quyllages on the common
people, who by their divinations, lies, and exhortations
are partly cause of the insurrection and rebellion now in
Wales. Reply : Le roy le veut." '
Popular movements were the occasion for satirical
songs against the great, songs composed by minstrels
and soon known by heart among the crowd. It was a
popular song which furnished to John Ball the text for
his famous speech at Blackheath in the revolt of 1381:
" When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman ? "
Again, under Henry VI, when the peasants of Kent rose,
and their allies the sailors took and beheaded the Duke
of Suffolk at sea, a satirical song was composed, became
popular and has come down to us. As before killing
him they had given a mock trial to the king's favourite,
so in the song they present the comedy of his funeral ;
' " Rolls of Parlidtaent," iii. p. 508, a.d. 1402.

MINSTRELS 213
nobles and prelates are asked to come and sing their
responses, and in this pretended burial service, which
is in reality a hymn of joy and triumph, the minstrel calls
down heavenly blessings on the murderers. At the end
the Commons are represented coming in their turn to
s'ng a sarcastic Requeiscant in pace over all English traitors. i
The renown of the popular rebel, Robin Hood the
outlaw, who lived in the twelfth century if he ever lived
at all, went on increasing. His manly virtues were ex
tolled ; picturesque companions were, later, invented for
him : Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Little John and all the
imaginary inhabitants of Sherwood Forest ; listeners were
told how this pious man, who, even in the worst danger,
waited till mass was over before thinking of his safety,
boldly robbed great lords and high prelates, but was
merciful to the poor ; 2 which was an indirect notice to
the brigands of the time that they should be careful to
discern in their rounds between the tares and the
wheat. The sympathy of the minstrels for ideas of emancipa
tion, which had made such progress in the fourteenth
century, was not only evinced in these songs, but also
in the remodelled romances recited by them in presence
of the nobles, and which henceforth were full of high-
flown declarations on the equality of men. The hearer
did not take offence ; the greater poets, favourites of
all that counted, the king himself in his public state
ments proclaimed liberal truths which it was hardly
expected would be acted upon literally. Thus Chaucer
' See Appendix XII, p. 437.
» The songs about him were collected by J. Ritson ; " Robin Hood
Ballads," London, second edition, 1832. Most of them are only of the
sixteenth century, but a few are of an earlier date. Robin Hood's popu
larity was, however, well established in the fourteenth century, as shown
by a line in " Piers Plowman," Skeat's edition. Text B, passus v., 1. 79. On
Robin Hood as the hero of popular songs, of many games and of plays, see
Chambers, " Medieval Stage," i. 174.

214 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
celebrates in his most eloquent verse the only true nobility
in his eyes, that which comes from the heart.' Thus
also King Edward I, on summoning the first true English
parliament in 1295, declared that he did so inspired by
the old maxim which prescribes that what concerns all
should be approved by all, proclaiming a principle whence
have since issued the most radical reforms of society, and
on which the American insurgents founded, centuries
later, their claim to independence.^
Such direct appeals from the king to his people con
tributed early to develop among the English the sense
of duty, of political rights and responsibilities. In days
of trouble, when parliament scarcely yet existed, the same
king thought he should explain his conduct to the people
and allow them to form an opinion : " The king about
this, and about his estate and as to his kingdom, and how
the business of the kingdom has come to naught, makes
known and wishes that all should know the truth of it ;
which ensues . . . " 3
In France the enunciation of liberal principles was
frequent in royal edicts, but the emptiness of these fine
words and the interested motives which caused them to
' " The Wyf of Bathes Tale " (sixty-eight lines on the equality of
men and on nobility) ; again, in the " Parson's Tale " : " Eek for to pryde
him of his gentrye is ful greet folye . . . we ben alle of o fader and of
o moder ; and alle we been of o nature roten and corrupt, both riche and
poure " (Skeat's edition of the " Canterbuiy Tales," vol. iv. p. 596). Not
less striking, these lines of a French poem of the same century, quoted in
the Discourse upon the state of letters in the fourteenth century, " Histoire
Litteraire de la France," vol. xxiv. p. 236 :
" Nus qui bien face n'est vilains,
Mes de vilonie est toz pla'ns
HaUz hom qui laide vie maine :
Nus n'est vilains s'il ne vilaine."
^ " Sicut lex justissima, provida circumspectione sacrorum principum
stabilita, hortatur et statuit ut quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur,
sic," etc. Rymer's " Foedera," year 1295, vol. ii. p. 689.
3 " Fcedera," year 1297, vol. ii. p. 783.

MINSTRELS 215
be used were scarcely veiled at all. Louis X, " le Hutin,"
in his ordinance of July 2, 13 15, declares that, " as accord
ing to the law of nature every one is born free," he has
resolved to enfranchise the serfs on his own estates. He
adds, however, that he will do so for money. Three days
later, fearing that his benefit is not sufficiently prized, he
supplements his first statement by a new one in which
his exalted ideas and his present needs are boldly inter
twined : " It may be that some, ill-advised and in default
of good counsel, might misunderstand such great benefit
and favour and wish rather to remain in the baseness of
servitude than to come to free estate : wherefore we
order and commit to you that, for the aid of the present war,
you levy on such persons according to the amount of
their property, and the conditions of servitude of each
one, as much and sufficiently as the condition and riches
of those persons may bear and as the necessity of our
war may require." '
Well then might the minstrels imitate the king himself
in repeating axioms so well known, and which, according
to appearance, there was so little chance of seeing carried
out. But ideas, like the seeds of trees falling on the soil,
are not lost, and the noble who had gone to sleep to the
murmur of verses chanted by the glee-man waked up one
day to the tumult of the crowd collected before London,
with the refrain of the priest John Ball for its war-cry.
And then he had to draw his sword and show by a massacre
that the time was not yet come to apply these axioms, and
that there was nothing in them save song.
Still were the trees dropping their seeds. Poets and
popular singers had thus an influence over social move
ments, less through the maxims scattered throughout
their great works than by those little unpolished pieces,
struck off on the moment, which the lesser among them
composed and sang for the people, at the cross-roa,ds in
I Isambert's " RecueU," vol. iii. pp. 102, 104,

2l6

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

A

ki

f

times of trouble, or by the peasants' hearth in ordinary
times, as a reward for hospitality.'
Minstrels, however, as singers of songs, propagators
of thoughts, tellers of romances, were to disappear. An
age was beginning when books and the
art of reading spread among the people,
and a more and more numerous public
would read and cease to listen ; the
theatres were, moreover, about to offer
a spectacle much superior to that of the
little troop of musicians and wandering
singers, and would compete with them
more powerfully than the " rude hus
bandmen and artificers of various crafts,"
against whose impertinence Edward IV
was so indignant. Replaced, unwanted,
the minstrels proper ceased to exist as
a class, leaving however behind them a
variety of men who could claim them
as ancestors, street musicians, mirth
mongers, or the " blind crouder with
no rougher voice then rude stile," who
sang for Sir Philip Sidney " the olde
song of Percy and Douglas."
In fact, the period of the Taillefers
who would go to death in the fight
while singing of Charlemagne was a
limited one ; the lustre which the jong
leurs or trouveres of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, who confined them
selves to the recitation of poetry, had shed on their
profession, was effaced in proportion as they associated
' A not at all rare occurrence. See in the fabliau, " Le povre Clere,"
how the itinerant verse teller is asked by the peasant who receives him to
say, while the supper is cooking : " Some of those things that are in writing,
either a song or a story of adventure," Bedier, " Les Fabliaux," 2nd ed.,
1895, p. 391.

A FOURTEENTH-CEN-
TtJRY JUGGLER.
[From MS. 10 E. IV.)

JUGGLERS 217
more closely with the mannerless bands of tumblers,
jugglers, leaders of performing bears {ursinarii, the Latin
documents of the time name them),' conjurors, and ribalds
of all kinds. 2
These bands had always existed, but the chanters of
romances, tellers of knights' high deeds, and of saints'
edifying examples, admitted even into the cloister, finding
grace before St. Thomas Aquinas,3 had, in the heyday
of their fame stood above them, or apart from them. At
all times, however, in castles and at fairs, were to be found
buffoons and jugglers, whose coarseness exhilarated the
spectators. The precise details which the contemporaries
give as to their performances show not only that their
jokes would not be tolerated among the rich of to-day,
but that there are even few out of the way villages where
' Performing animals or wild ones in cages enjoyed a popularity which
proved more constant than that of minstrels, since it has continued unabated
from the early middle ages to the present time. Ursinarii frequently appear
in the accounts of the Shrewsbury corporation quoted by Chambers who
gives, e.g. this noteworthy entry : " In regardo dato ursinario domini Regis
pro agitacione bestiarum suarum ultra denarios tunc ibidem coUectos. . . ."
(Mediaeval Stage, ii. 251 ; year 1517). The English kings, as is well
known, had their menagerie in the Tower, as the French ones had theirs
in Paris. St. Louis sent, " as a great gift," in 1 2 5 5, an elephant to Henry
III ; " and we do not beUeve any had been seen before in England," wrote
Matthew Paris who, good draughtsman as he was, painted the portrait of
the wondrous beast. The miniature in MS. Nero D I, in the British
Museum, fol. 169, is by him, according to Madden, " Historia Anglorum,"
Rolls, Preface. 2 " There saugh I pleyen jugelours,
Magiciens and tregetours.
And phitonisses, charmeresses,
Olde wiches, sorceresses
That use exorsisaciouns
And eke thes fumygaciouns."
(Chaucer's " House of Fame," 1. 169.)
3 Chambers, " Mediseval Stage," i. 58, quoting, the " Summa Theo-
logias " : " Sicut dictum est, ludus est necessarius ad conservationem vitje
humanse," etc. On the distinction between the higher and lower min
strelsy, see ibid. pp. 59 ff-

21 8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
peasants on a festival would accept them without disgust.
The great of former days found pleasure, however, in
them, and in the troop of mummers and tumblers who
went about wherever mirth was wanted, there always
were some who excited laughter by the ignoble means
described in John of Salisbury's " Polycraticus " — " so
shameful that even a cynic would blush at seeing them." '
But people of high degree did not blush, they laughed.
Two hundred years later, some sacrilegious clerks, out
of hate for the Archbishop of York, made themselves
guilty of the same monstrous buffooneries in his very
cathedral, and the episcopal letter relating their misdeeds
with the precision of a legal report, adds that they were
committed more ribaldorum.'^ Langland, at the same epoch,
shows that one of his personages is not a true minstrel,
either of the higher or of the lower sort, since he is neither
able to " telle faire gestes," nor to practise those welcome
turpitudes. 3
The greater was the feast, the coarser were often the
deeds and songs of the mirth-mongers. In this way, in
particular, were they accustomed to celebrate Christmas.
Thomas Gascoigne, in the sort of theological dictionary
compiled by him, beseeches his readers to abstain from
hearing such Christmas songs, for they leave on the mind
images and ideas which it is almost impossible afterwards
to wash out. He adds as a warning the story of a man
he personally knew : " I have known, I, Gascoigne,
Doctor in Divinity, who am writing this book, a man
who had heard at Christmas some of those repulsive songs.
' Lib. i. chap. viii.
2 " Historical Papers from the Northern Registers," ed. Raine, Rolls
Series, p. 398. Cf. Bodlei-.n MS. 264, fos. 21, 51, 56, 91, etc.
3 " Ich can nat tabre ne trompe • ne telle faire gestes.
Fatten ne fithelen • at festes, ne harpen,
Japen ne jogelen • ne gentelliche pipe,
Nother sailen ne sautrien • ne singe with the giteme."
(" Piers Plowman/' ed, Skeat, Text C, passus .xvi. 1. 205.)

TUMBLERS

219

It so happened that the shameful things he had heard
had made such a deep impression on his mind that he
could never in after time get rid of those remembrances
nor wipe away those images. So he fell into such a deep
melancholy that at length it proved deadly to him." '
The representations of the dance of Salome to be
found in mediaeval stained glass or manuscripts give an
idea of the sort of tricks and games considered the fittest
to amuse people of importance while sitting in their hall
or having their dinner. It is by dancing on her hands,
head downwards, that the young woman gains the suffrages

FAVOURITE DANCES IN MEDI.9iVAL ENGLAND.
[From MS. 10 E. IV.)
of Herod. As the idea of such a dance could not be
drawn from the Bible, it obviously arose from the customs
of the time. At Clermont-Ferrand, in the stained glass
of the cathedral (thirteenth century), Salome dances on
knives which she holds with each hand, she also having
her head downwards. In a window at the Lincoln cathe
dral she has no knives, but her " dance " is of the same
sort and her red-stockinged feet touch the upper line
of the glass panel. At Verona, she is represented on the
' " Loci e libro veritatum ; Passages selected from Gascoigne's Theo
logical Dictionary" (1403-48), ed. Thprold Rogers, Oxford, 1881, p. 144,

220 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
most ancient of the bronze gates of St. Zeno (ninth cen
tury) bending backwards and touching her feet with her
head. Those standing by are filled with surprise and
admiration, one puts his hand to his mouth, the other to
his cheek, in an involuntary gesture of amazement. She
may be seen in the same posture in several manuscripts
in the British Museum ; Herod is sitting at his table
with his lords, while the young woman dances head down
wards.' In another manuscript, also of the fourteenth
century, minstrels are shown playing on their instruments,
while a professional dancing girl belonging to their troop
performs as usual head downwards, but this time, as at

FAVOURITE DANCES IN PERSIA.
[From a pencil-case.)
Clermont, her hands rest on two swords. The accounts
of the royal exchequer of England sometimes mention
sums paid to passing dancers, who, no doubt, must also
have performed surprising feats, for the payments are
considerable. Thus, in the third year of his reign,
Richard II pays to John Katerine, a dancer of Venice,
six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence for having
played and danced before him.^
In the East, where, in our travels, we have some
times the surprise of finding ancient customs still living
' For instance, MS. Add. 29704, fol. 11. This particular illumina
tion seems to be of the fourteenth century.
? Pevon's "Issues of the Exchequer," p. 212,

BUFFOONS 221
which we can at home only study in books, the fashion
for buffoons and mimics survives, and even remains the
great distraction of princes. The Bey of Tunis, when
I was there years ago, had fools to amuse him in
the evening, who insulted and diverted him by the con
trast between their permitted insolence and his real power.
Among the rich Moslem women of the same city, few of
whom could read, the monotony of days spent by them
till death came under the shadow of the same walls, behind
the same gratings, was broken by the tales of the female
fool, whose duty was to enliven the harem by sallies of
the strangest liberty. As for dances, they frequently
consist, in the East, in performances similar to that of
Salome, such as shown in our manuscripts. Women
dancing head downwards constantly appear in Persian
pictures ; several examples may be seen in the Victoria
and Albert Museum, and the same subject often occurs
on the valuable pencil-cases formerly made with so much
taste and art in Persia.
If our ancestors of the fourteenth century could enjoy
such pleasures, no wonder that moralists declared more
and more openly against both minstrels and mimics and
ranked them with those rogues and vagabonds denounced
as a public danger by parliament. As years pass the
discredit grows. In the sixteenth century Philip Stubbes
saw in minstrels the personification of all vices, and he
justified in bitter words his contempt for " suche drunken
sockets and bawdye parasits as range the cuntreyes, ryming
and singing of uncleane, corrupt and filthie songes in
tavernes, ale-houses, innes, and other publique assemblies."
Their life is like the shameful songs of which their heads
are full, and they are the origin of all abominations ; the
more dangerous because their number is so great:
" Every towne, citie, and countrey is full of these
minstrelles to pype up a dance to the devill : but of
dyvines, so few there be as they maye hardly be scene.

222

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

"But some of them will reply, and say. What, sir 1
we have lycences from justices of peace to pype and use
our minstralsie to our best commoditie. Cursed be those
lycences which lycence any man to get his lyving with
the destruction of many thousands !
" But have you a lycence from the archjustice of
peace, Christe Jesus ? If you have not . . . than may
you, as rogues, extravagantes, and straglers from the
heavenlye country, be arrested of the high justice of
peace, Christ Jesus, and be punished with eternall death,
notwithstanding your pretensed licences of earthly men." '
Such was the state of degradation the noble profession
of the old singers had reached ; the necessity either of
obtaining a licence or of joining a gild, as prescribed by
Edward IV, had been powerless to check the decay. With
new manners and inventions their raison d'etre disappeared ;
the ancient reciters of poems, after having mingled with
the disreputable troops of caterers to public amusement,
saw these troops survive them, and, regular players apart,
there henceforth only remained upon the roads those
coarse buffoons, bearwards, and vulgar music makers
whom thoughtful men held as reprobates.
I PhiUip Stubbes' " Anatomy of Abuses," ed. F. J. FurnivaU, New
Shakspere Society, 1877-79, PP- 17I; 172. Stubbes' opinion was shared
by all the religious writers or moralists of the sixteenth century.

A PERFORMING BEAR.
{From MS. lo E. IV.)

A SHAM MESSENGER.
[From MS. lo E. IV.)

CHAPTER II
MESSENGERS, ITINERANT MERCHANTS AND
PEDLARS
ALL his life long, kind, loving, merry Chaucer, a
good observer, a good listener and good ta ker,
was fond of travels and travellers, of roamers and
tale-tellers, of people who came from afar, bringing home
with them many stories if little money, stories in which
much invention no doubt was mingled with a little truth :
but what is the good of raising a protest against harm
less invention ? Is not sometimes their mixture with
" sooth " a pleasant one ? Thus, he said :
" Thus saugh I fals and sothe com'pouned
Togeder fle for oo (one) tydynge."
Interested in all that was human he studied ordinary
types and rare ones ; he observed mine Host, and looked
also for seekers of adventure, and was never tired of
hearing their tales :

224 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
" Aventure,
That is the moder of tydynges.
As the see is of welles and of sprynges."
No greater pleasure for him than to see :
" Winged wondres faste fleen,
Twenty thousand in a route,
As Eolus hem blew aboute."
He was in this a real connoisseur, fully appreciating the
merit of a well-told fable and knowing how useful and
pleasant some such may be found to beguile slow-winged
time. Long before he started from the Tabard, " faste
by the Belle," for a journey which millions of English
men have since performed at his heels, allured by the
music or merriment of his word, he had this same taste
for " unkouthe syghtes and tydynges," as well as for
" thinges glad." Finding himself once in great " dis
tresse " of mind, with a heavy heart, " disesperat of all
blys," what did he dream of to " solace " himself, but
of meeting and hearing the whole innumerable tribe of
tale-tellers, wayfarers, and adventure seekers, by fancy
assembled in an immense house, " made of twigges, salwe,
rede and green eke } " He wanted us to know,
and he wrote of the " House of Fame," where after
having met the bard " that bare of Thebes up the fame "
(Statius), and " gret Omere," and " Venus' clerke Ovide,"
" Englyssh Gaunfride " (of Monmouth, of Arthurian
fame), and many more, he thought that there was no
room for hirn, and feeling his distress as keen as ever,
dreamed of something else, willing
" Somme newe tydyngis for to lere,
Somme newe thinge, Y not what,
Tydyngs other this or that.
Of love, or suche thinges glad." '

' AU the e.xtracts here are from the " House of Fame," book in.
" Complete Works," ed. Skeat, Oxford, 1894, vol. ui. pp. 33 ff.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 225
In this he had full satisfaction ; his dream took
another turn, and he was led towards the place he wanted,
where things glad were to be found, a temple not of fame,
but of tales and tidings, of noise and merriment :
" And theroute come so grete a noyse.
That had hyt stonde upon Oyse,
Men myght hyt have herd esely
To Rome, Y trowe sikerly."
The noise went up to the sky from innumerable apertures,
for " This hous hath of entrees
As feele (many) as of leves ben on trees.
In somer whan they grene ben."
Never for one instant is the place quiet nor silent ; it is
always " Filde ful of tydynges.
Other loude or of whisprynges ;
And over alle the houses angles,
Ys ful of rounynges and of jangles.
Of werres, of pes, of mariages.
Of restes, of labour and of viages."
War and peace, and love and travels, all this he was
to make in after-time the subject of his " Canterbury
Tales," and he represents himself in this earher poem
as if coming to the well and spring of all tales,
placed somewhere in the land of dreams and fancy, yet
surrounded by people who were neither fanciful nor
dreamy creatures, but bony beings, on the contrary, with
strong muscles and alert tongues, and the dust of the
road to Rome or the East on their feet ; surrounded,
in fact, by these very roamers we are now trying to call
up one by one from the past, and who receive in the
" House of Fame " such an apotheosis as befits their
quaint if rather questionable character. Good Chaucer
15

226 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
lends a willing ear, and the ways of speech of these people
are carefully preserved in his verse for those who after
him may find interest in them. In this manner they
spoke : every person, says the poet,
" Every wight that I saugh there
Rouned (muttered) in eche others ere,
A newe tydynge prevely,
Or elles tolde alle oppenly
Ryght thus, and seyde ; ' Nost not thou
That ys betyd, late or now ? '
— ' No,' quod he, ' Telle me what.'
And than he tolde hym this and that.
And swore therto that hit was sothe ;
' Thus hath he sayde ' and ' Thus he dothe,'
And ' Thus shal hit be ' and ' Thus herde Y seye.' "
And the delight is that the tale repeated by many is always
new, for it is never exactly the same ; the fib fattens as
it grows old, so that it may serve your pleasure many a
time and oft :
" Whan oon had herde a thinge ywis.
He come forthright to another wight.
And gan him tellen anon ryght.
The same thynge that him was tolde.
Or hyt a forlonge way was olde.
But gan sommewhat for to eche (increase)
To this tydynge in this speche
More than hit ever was . . .
As fire ys wont to quyk and goo
From a sparke sprongen amys,
Tille alle a citee brent up ys."
That there may be no mistake about the sort of people
to whom the pleasant art of stretching a lie is so familiar,
Chaucer is careful to name them, and there we find almost
every one of our friends already mentioned or hereafter
described, the sea or land wayfarers :
" And lord ! this hous in alle tymes
Was ful of shipmen and pilgrimes.
With scrippes (bags) bret-ful of leseyngs (lies)
Entremedled with tydynges.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 227
And eke allone be hemselve,
O many a thousand tymes twelve
Saugh I eke of these pardoners,
Currours, and eke of messangers
With boystes crammed ful of lyes."
What Chaucer gathered from these shipmen, pardoners,
couriers, and messengers, he assures us it was not his
intention to tell the world,
" For hit no nede is redely ;
Folke kan hit synge bet than I."
Whether or not some doubt may have afterwards
entered his mind about the great poetical faculty of
" folke," certain it is that, for the delight of future ages,
he did not stick to his word, as every reader of the
" Canterbury Tales " well knows.
These " boystes " which Chaucer represents, carried
by messengers and couriers, were filled in the way he
describes only in a metaphorical sense, and this left room
for more solid ware, for letters and parcels too, since in
those old simple days, the messengers were the only
equivalent for mail and for parcels post. They were to
be found in the service of abbots, bishops, nobles, sheriffs,
courts of justice,' and of the king. Such a costly fore
runner of the post was not, of course, available for every
body ; people did as they best could. The poor man
' " A suit respecting civil matter was commenced in this reign (Ed. I),
as in earlier or subsequent reigns, by the purchase of a writ and sometimes
by biU. . . . The writs were committed to messengers who had to travel
into the different parts of the kingdom and deliver them to the sheriffs or
other proper ofiicers to be served on the defendants." Horwood, " Year
books of Edward I," years 30—31, p. xxv. Against the purchase of the
writs the Commons protested, claiming (35 Ed. Ill, year 1351— 2) that
this was contrary to Magna Charta, according to which the king " ne vendra
ne deleiera droit a nuUi." The king refused to give up what he considered
as a legitimate profit, but promised that the tariff would be lowered. " RoUs
of ParUament," ii., 241.

228

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

waited till sorne friend was going a journey ; the rich
only had express messengers, entrusted with their
errands to distant places and with the carrying of their
letters, generally written at dictation by a scribe on a
sheet of parchment, and then sealed in wax with the
master's signet.' The king kept twelve messengers with
a fixed salary ; they followed him everywhere, in constant
readiness to start ; they received threepence a day when

A PROFESSIONAL MESSENGER.
{From the MS. lo E. IV.)
they were on the road, and four shillings and eightpence
a year to buy shoes. ^ They were entrusted with letters
I See the representation of lords and ladies dictating their letters to
scribes, and of messengers carrying them to their destinations in the MSS.
at the British Museum, Royal lo Ed. IV, fol. 305, 306, etc., and Add.
12228 fol. 238.
2 "King Edward II's Household and Wardrobe Ordinances," 1323,
ed. FurnivaU, 1876, p. 46. The French kings had a much larger number :
" Les riches personnages entretenaient des messagers de pied et des chevau-
cheurs : de ces demiers le roi de France en avail une centaine . . . de
moindres seigneurs se contentaient de deux ou trois. Les chevaucheurs
etaient payes a forfait: au XIV^ sidcle, 18 francs par jour (present value)
pour un parcours de 55 kilometres environ. . . . Les messagers de pied,
par joumee de 30 kilometres en moyenne, touchaient 9 francs chez le Roi
(1380) ; h la solde des particuliers ou des viUes leur salaire variait de 5 ^
10 francs. Un voyage de nuit valait le double : 20 franc's ; de mem.e les

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 229
for the kings of France and Scotland ; sent to call together
the representatives of the nation for Parliament ; to order
the publication of the papal sentence against Guy de
Montfort ; to call to Windsor the knights of St. George ;
to summon the " archbishops, earls, barons, and other
lords and ladies of England and Wales " to London to
be present at the funeral of the late queen (PhiHppa) ;
to prescribe the proclamation in the counties of the statutes
made in Parliament ; to command the " archbishops,
bishops, abbots, priors, deans, and chapters of the cathe
dral churches of all the shires to pray for the soul of Anne,
late Queen of England, deceased." '
Edward III sends messengers or heralds to foreign
parts, viz., France, Germany, Brabant, Flanders, Scotland,
to call the nobility of these countries to a great tourna
ment, a sort of international match to be held on St.
George's Day. The amount of the expense so incurred,
which is not less than thirty-two pounds, shows that the
messengers must have had long protracted journeys and
must have had to visit every part of the countries allotted
to each of them. 2
Sometimes the king got into trouble with his Com
mons on account of expenses for messengers, which he
did not always feel inclined to pay from his own purse.
Such a case happened in 1378, and the Commons took
this opportunity to once more assert their views about
courses perilleuses." D'Avenel, " L'evolution des moyens de transport,"
Paris, 1919, p. 142. Cf. Thorold Rogers, " History of Agriculture and
Prices," i. 665, iv. 712.
' Anne of Bohemia, first wife of Richard II, bom at Prague in 1366,
grand-daughter of blind King John of Bohemia killed at Crecy, herself
dying of the plague at Shene, 1394, leaving her husband almost crazy with
grief. " Issue roll of Thomas de Brantingham," ed. F. Devon, London,
1835, PP- xxxii, xxxvii, xliv, 408; "Issues of the Exchequer," 1837,
pp. 220, 255. Whole pages of Thomas de Brantingham's roU (e.g. pp.
1 54-1 5 5) are filled with payments received by messengers, which show
the frequent use made of their services.
' 32 Ed. Ill, " Issues of the Exchequer," p. 169.

230 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
the French and other foreign possessions of their sovereign,
Ireland being included among them. They plainly state,
as they had before, that these countries and the expenses
concerning them are a matter for the king, not for them ;
it is a sort of kingly luxury with which they will have
nothing to do. They remonstrate, therefore, that about
forty-six thousand pounds sterling have been spent and
entered as an item of national expense " for the safeguard
of certain countries, places and fortresses, for which
the Commons ought in no way to be charged. These
are partly in the march of Calais and partly at Brest, Cher
bourg, in Gascony, and in Ireland ; and also expenses
over certain messengers to Flanders, Lombardy, Navarre,
and Scotland."
The Government peremptorily refuses to accept this
kind of reasoning, and returns a spirited reply : " To
which it was answered that Gascony and the other forts
which our lord the king has in the parts beyond, are and
must be as barbicans for the kingdom of England, and
if the barbicans are well kept, with the safeguard formed
by the sea, the kingdom will be secure of peace. Other
wise we shall never find rest nor peace with our enemies ;
for then they would push hot war to the thresholds of
our houses, which God forbid. Besides, through these
barbicans our said lord the king has convenient gates
and entrances towards his enemies to grieve them when
he is ready and can act." Telling reasons are also given
for retaining among public expenses the costs of the
journeys of messengers north and south.' None the
less did the Commons of England long continue to
consider the French wars, glorious perhaps, but undoubt
edly expensive, as a personal quarrel of their sovereign,
and as, in fact, little more than a rivalry between two
French sovereigns speaking the same language and belong
ing to the same family.
' 2 Rich. II, year 1378, "Rolls of Pariiament," vol. iU. p. 36.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 231
Besides letters, couriers and messengers had many
strange parcels to carry from one place in the country
to another : presents to fair ladies, commodities of all
sorts for their own masters. Thus, in the year 1396, we
find a servant of the Duke de Berri sent as a messenger
to Scotland, and travelling all the way thither from France
across England to fetch certain greyhounds of which
his master was especially fond. He is accompanied by
three men on horseback, to help him in taking care
of the hounds, and he carries a safe-conduct from
Richard II, to travel without hindrance through the
English dominions with his followers and their be
longings.' Among the missions given by the king to his servants
are some which, at the present day, would seem singularly
repugnant. He might, for instance, charge one of his
faithful retainers to carry the quarters of a criminal's
body executed for treason to the great towns of England.
In this case he did not employ simple messengers ;
they were personages of trust, followed by an escort to
convey the remains. Thus Edward III, in the fifty-first
year of his reign, paid not less than twenty pounds to
" Sir William de Faryngton, knight, for the costs and
expenses he had incurred for transporting the four quarters
of the body of Sir John of Mistreworth, knight, to different
parts of England." '
Of all travellers, the messenger was the swiftest ;
first, because travelling was his business ; he was a good
horseman, an experienced person, clever in getting out
of trouble on the road and at the inns ; then he had the
right of way ; woe to whoever thought to stop him ;
there were immense fines if the master were powerful,
still more if the man were the king's messenger. A
messenger of the queen, who had been imprisoned by
I Rymer's "Foedera," AprU 3, 1396 (19 Rich. II).
2 " Issues of the Exchequer," p. 202.

23i ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
the constable of Roxburgh Castle, did not hesitate to
claim ;/^ 1 0,000 sterling for contempt of his sovereign,
and ;^2,ooo as indemnity for himself.'
When, on August 7, 1316, Jacques d'Euse, cardinal-
bishop of Porto, was chosen pope at Lyons, and assumed
the name of John XXII, Edward II being at York learnt
the news ten days afterwards through Laurence of Ire
land, messenger of the house of the Bardi. And indeed
we find by the accounts of the king's household that this
prince paid Laurence twenty shillings on the 17th of
August to reward him for his trouble. It was only on
the 27th of September that, being still at York, the king
received by Durand Budet, a messenger of cardinal de
Pelagrua, the official letters announcing the election ;
he gave five pounds to the messenger. Finally, the
pope's nuncio having arrived in person shortly afterwards,
bearing the same news no longer so fresh, the king made
him a present, inversely proportionate to his speed, of
a hundred pounds. ^
Such was the custom, presents were made to the
bringers of good news ; royal messengers had thus a
chance of casually increasing their meagre pay of three
pence a day. Most fortunate were those who brought
word to the king himself of happy events. Edward III
gave a forty marks pension for life to the queen's messenger
who came announcing the birth of the Prince of Wales,
the future Black Prince ; he gave thirteen pounds, three
shillings and fourpence to John Cok of Cherbourg, who
told him of the capture of King John at Poictiers ; he
settled a pension of one hundred shillings upon Thomas
of Brynchesley who brought him the good news of the
capture of Charles of Blois. 3
I "Rolls of Parliament," i. p. 48 (18 Ed. I).
2 " Wardrobe Accounts of Edward II," Archaologia, xxvi. 321, 336.
3 Extract from a letter to the author : " Yesterday I was reading your
' Vie Nomade,' and that portion of it which speaks of the rewards given
in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to m.essengers who brought good tidings

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 233
Sometimes messengers, in spite of their privileges and
cleverness, were liable to find themselves in very difficult
plight. In time of war they had to conceal their real
function, and were in constant danger of being stopped
and having their bag searched and their letters opened.
People felt strongly about foreigners living in England,
many of them being friars who might disclose the secrets
of the realm in their private correspondence. The
Commons therefore asked for very strict rules to be passed
in order to remedy this possible evil, and we find them,
in the year 1346, when England was at war with France,
recommending the creation of something like the cabinets
noirs of a later date.'
Langland in his " Visions " graphically compares
the different modes of travelling of messengers and such
other wayfarers as merchants going with their goods
from one place to another. The one is the swiftest
of all, no one would dare to stop him ; the other
is retarded by his pack, his debts, his fear of robbers
which prevents his travelling at dark, the impossibility
for him to use short cuts across the fields, while short

to the king. It may interest you to know that a remnant of this custom
still survives. The ofiicer sent by a general after a victory to convey the
despatch to the Queen, receives besides a promotion in rank (or a decoration),
a pecuniary reward. The ofiicer who brought the news of the fall of
Sebastopol to the Queen received the rank of Colonel, and a present of 500
guineas. " My brother A.D.C., Major Anson, who carried home from China
the despatch announcing the fall of Pekin, was promoted Colonel, and
received a present of 500 guineas. — St. James' Club, May 30, 1890. —
F. Grant." What happened, in our less ceremonious days, when the news was brought
of the Mame, of Ypres, of Messines .? Doubtless it was not brought ; it
came. ' " Item, be it prohibited everywhere that any aUen send letters beyond
the sea, or receive letters which come thence ; unless he shew them to the
chanceUor or to some other lord of the Privy Council, or at least to the chief
wardens of the ports or their lieutenants, who shaU further show them to
the said CouncU." "RoUs of Pariiament," vol. U. p. 163, 20 Fd UI.

234 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
cuts are freely allowed to messengers : no hayward
would disturb them ; no man in his senses, no " wys
man " would " wroth be " on account of his crops being
spoiled by a messenger ; the messenger shows his letters
and is free to go :
" . . . Yf a marchaunt and a messager • metten to-gederes.
And scholde wende o way • v/here both mosten reste . . .
The marchante mote nede be lette (kept) • lengere then the messagere ;
The messager doth na more • bote with hus mouthe telleth
Hus erande and hus lettere sheweth • and is a-non delyvered.
And thauh thei wende by the wey • tho two to-gederes,
Thauh the messager make hus wey • a-mydde the whete,
Wole no wys man wroth be • ne hus wed (pledge) take ;
Ys no haiwarde yhote (bidden) ¦ hus wed for to take :
Necesitas non habet legem.
Ac yf the merchaunt make hus way • overe menne come.
And the haywarde happe •, with hym for to mete.
Other hus hatt, other hus hode ¦ othere elles hus gloves
The marchaunt mot for-go ¦ other moneye of hus porse . . .
Yut thauh thei wenden on way ¦ as to Wynchestre fayre.
The marchaunt with hus marchaundise ¦ may nat go so swithe
As the messager may • ne with so mochel ese.
For that on (one) bereth bote a boxe • a brevet (letter) ther-ynne,
Ther the marchaunt ledeth a male (trunk) • with meny kynne thynges.
And dredeth to be ded there-fore ¦ and (if) he in derke mete
With robbours and revers (thieves) • that riche men dispoilen ;
Ther the messager is ay murye • hus mouthe ful of songes." '
Wayfarers there were in whom both characteristics
were united, the slowness of pace of the merchant and
the lightness of heart of the messenger. These were
the pedlars, a very numerous race in the Middle Ages,
one of the few sorts of wanderers that have not yet entirely
disappeared. A jovial race they seem to have been ;
they are so now, most of them, for their way to success
is through fair speech and enticing words ; and how
could they be enticing if they did not show good humour
and jollity .'' " Gaiety " mends their broken wares, and
colours the faded ones, and blinds customers to otherwise
' Text C, pas. xiv. U. 33-59.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 235
obvious defects. They have always been described thus ;
they were merry and sharp-tongued ; such was Shake
speare's Autolycus ; such is, in a novel of our time, the
jovial owner of the dog Mumps, Bob Jakin of " The
Mill on the Floss." " ' Get out wi' you. Mumps,' said
Bob, with a kick ; ' he is as quiet as a lamb, sir ' — an
observation which Mumps corroborated by a low growl,
as he retreated behind his master's legs." About the
exact scrupulousness prevailing among the tribe the
opinion has perhaps not been quite so consistent, which
is the best that can be said for it.
One good point about them, however, is that in
mediaeval England, whatever may have been their repu
tation, they entirely escaped legislation. Very possibly
they were impliedly included in statutes against vagrants
and rovers ; but they may at least argue that as a matter
of fact they are not named in any Act of Parliament, and
pass unobserved or nearly so by the Westminster legis
lator down to a comparatively recent date. They are
for the first time named in a statute during the reign of
Edward VI, in which, it is true, they are treated in a
contemptuous manner, being described as more " hurtful
than necessary to the common wealth." This is called
" an acte for tynkers and pedlers," and is to the following
effect : " For as muche as it is evident that tynkers,
pedlers and suche like vagrant persons are more hurtfull
than necessarie to the Common Wealth of this realm.
Be it therefore ordeyned . . . that ... no person or
persons commonly called pedler, tynker or pety chapman
shall wander or go from one towne to another or from
place to place out of the towne, parishe or village where
such person shall dwell, and sell pynnes, poyntes, laces,
gloves, knyves, glasses, tapes or any suche kynde of wares
whatsoever, or gather connye skynnes or suche like things
or use or exercise the trade or occupation of a tynker,"
except those that shall have a licence from two justices

236 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
of the peace ; and then they will be allowed to travel
only in the " circuyte " assigned to them.'
Queen Elizabeth, too, had a word for pedlars, and it
was not more complimentary than what her brother
had to say about them, although " scollers of the Univer-
sityes " joined them on her list of disreputable roamers.
They figure in her " Acte for the punishment of
vacabondes " ; and a very curious list of wanderers is
found in it : " It ys nowe publyshed," says the queen,
"that . . . all ydle persones goinge aboute in any
countrey of the said Realme, using subtyll craftye and
unlawfuU games or playes, and some of them fayninge
themselves to have knowledge in phisnomye, palmestrye,
. . . and all fencers, bearwardes, comon players in inter
ludes and minstrels not belonging to any baron of this
realme ... all juglers, pedlars, tynkers, and petye chap
men . . . and all scollers of the Universityes of Oxford
or Cambridge y' goe about begginge . . . and all shipmen
pretendinge losses by sea .... shalbee deemed roges
vacabounds and sturdy beggers intended of by this present
act." * But the case of pedlars was not seriously taken
in hand before the reign of William III who put a tax
upon them and, ominously enough, bound them to certify
commissioners for transportation how they travelled and
traded. 3
The late date of this statute of pedlars, if it may be
called so, is the more remarkable that they swarmed along
the roads in the Middle Ages, more numerous than
tinkers or any other wandering representatives of petty
trades. There were not then as now large shops in every
village with all the necessaries of life ready provided for the
inhabitants. The shop itself was itinerant, being nothing
else than the pack of travelling chapmen. In the same way
' 5 and 6 Ed. VT, ch. 21. Statutes, vol. iv. part i. p. 155.
' 14 EUz. ch. V. "Statutes," vol. iv. part i. pp. 590 ff
3 8 and 9 WiU. IH, ch. 25.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 237
as the literature propagated by the minstrels, as news,
tales, and letters, pardons from Rome and many other
commodities, so household wares were carried about
the country by indefatigable wayfarers. A host of small
useful things, or sometimes useless, but so pleasing ! were
concealed in their unfathomable boxes. The contents
of them are pretty well shown by a series of illuminations
in a fourteenth-century manuscript, where a pedlar is
represented asleep at the foot of a tree, while monkeys
have got hold of his box and help themselves to the con
tents. They find in it vests, caps, gloves, musical instru
ments, purses, girdles, hats, cutlasses, pewter pots, and
a number of other articles.'
As to the means by which pedlars came by their
goods, a variety seem to have been used by them, and
purchase was only one among several. A proverbial
saying preserved for us by Langland shows how they
secured furs for their country customers. The author
of the " Visions " states how Repentance came once to
Avarice, and examined him as to his usurious doings :
" ' Hastow pite on pore men ¦ that mote nedes borwe ? '
' I have as moche pite of pore men • as pedlere hath of cattes.
That wolde kille hem, yf he cacche hem myghte • for coveitise of
here skynnes.' " ^
a practice which cannot fail to be deeply resented by all
lovers of cats.
The regular merchants whom Langland and Chaucer
describe, so splendid to look at that no one knew they
were " in dette," adorned with Flaundrish hats and "botes
clasped faire and fetisly," were a very different sort of
' Cf the contents of the pack of a French " porte-balle " ot the
eighteenth century : " . . . Un de ces merciers ambulants qu'on appelle
porte-balles et qui lui crie : Monsieur le chevaUer, jarretieres, ceintures, cordons
de montre, tabatieres du dernier gout, vraies jaback, bagues, cachets de
montre. . . ." Diderot, " Jacques le Fataliste." Ed. Asseline, p. 30.
= Text B, pas. v. 1. 257.

238

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

people ; but though no mere wanderers, they were, too,
great wayfarers. Many of them had had to visit the
continent to find markets for their goods, and for their
purchases. Through them too, and it was in fact, perhaps,
the safest and most reliable among many such channels of
information, ideas of what was going on in the outer world
and how things were managed in France and elsewhere,
points of similitude and comparison, were introduced
into England and made the subject of thought and
discussion.

igatoiinfinrfitUiO

iilit«»t6fi)faiMni0nmlditfti«qia ana u

^ <4

A PEDLAR ROBBEDBY MONKEYS.
{From MS. lo E. IV.)

During the fourteenth century the foreign trade of
England had greatly increased ; there was a constant
intercourse with Flanders, with Bruges above all other
towns, for the sale of home produce : wools especially,
and woolfels, cheese, butter, tin, coal,' etc., with the
' The EngUsh coaling trade had greatly increased in the fourteenth
century ; large quantities of coal were brought by water from Newcastle and
other places to London and partly consumed on the spot, partly exported.
The importance of coal mines did not escape the notice of the Commons,
who stated in the year 1376-7 that, " en diverses parties deinz le Roialme
d'Engleterre sont diverses miners de carbons, dont les communes du dit
partie ont lour sustenantz en grande partie." 51 Ed. Ill, " Rolls of Parlia
ment," U. 370. Cf. Salzmann, " English Industries of the Middle A^es,"

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 239
Rhine country, with Gascony, with Spain, for the pur
chase of wines ; ' with the Hanse towns, Lombardy,
Venice, and the East. UnintelHgent regulations con
stantly interfered, it is true, with this development, but
so strong was the impulse that it went on steadily. One
of the most persistent and most noxious of these regu
lations was the prohibition to export money or bullion,
which governments were never tired of renewing. 2 English
merchants were forbidden, when purchasing goods in
foreign countries, to pay for them with money ; they
had to pay in kind, with wools, cheese and other home
produce, which of course might or might not be found
acceptable by the vendor. It was, in other words, for
bidden to use money as a means of facilitating exchange,
which is its very raison d'etre, and people had to return
to the primitive practice of troc, or exchange in kind.
It had sometimes worse effects than that of impeding
transactions ; foreign merchants might, as once did the
Flemings, show their appreciation of the rules imposed
on their English purchasers by answering their proffer
of wools and cheese with a beating and imprisonment
until they would alter their laws or their minds. For
191 3, ch. I, and H. Hall, "A select BibUography for the study, sources and
literature of English Political Economy," London, 1914.
' The trade in wines was enormous, especially with Gascony, and
subjected to the most minute regulations. Not only the importation of
it was the occasion of ceaseless interfering, but the retail sale in towns was
perpetually regulated anew by local ordinances. Woe to the vintner who
was detected meddling in any unfair way with his liquor ; he might experi
ence the chastisement inflicted upon John Penrose, who for such an offence
was sent to the pillory in 1364, was made to drink publicly there his own
stuff, had what he could not drink poured over his head, and was besides
sentenced to renounce his trade for ever. Riley, " Memorials of London,"
1868, p. 318.
' Same rules in France : " Que nul billon, vaissellemente, joyaux d'or
et d'argent ne soint traits hors dudit royaum.e par personne quelle que ce
soit, si ce n'estoit vaissellem^ente de prelats ou de nobles ou d'autres gens
d'eglise pour lour service." Ordinance of Jean le Bon, dated from London,
1358; Isambert, vol. v. p. 39.

240 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
which treatment, English merchants sent doleful com
plaints to Parliament. In such cases retaliation upon
Flemings in England might be demanded, but no thought
was entertained, even by the injured party, of repealing
laws considered as an indispensable safeguard for the
kingdom.' Not much wiser were the rules applied to merchant
shipping, made worse by constant change, a defect which
was noticeable in every trade regulation of that time.
Some are curious as being an attempt to establish the
long lived, but more moderate rules devised by Cromwell
in 165 1 : " Item, to increase the navy of England which
is now greatly diminished, it is assented and accorded,
that none of the king's liege people do from henceforth
ship any merchandize in going out or coming within
the realm of England in any port, but only in ships of
the king's liegeance." But the very next year this im
possible statute was altered so as to practically annul it :
It is ordained and granted that the said ordinance only
have place as long as ships of the said ligeance in the
parts where the said merchants happen to dwell be found
able and sufficient." * The same unsteadiness of purpose
was shown in almost every branch of the yet unbaptized
science of political economy.
Not less worthy of notice than this attempt at a
Navigation Act is the claim made, even then, by the
Commons of England to a traditional supremacy over
the seas. In one of their innumerable petitions con
cerning the decay of the navy, which seems to have been
a favourite complaint in England from the remotest period
down to our own time, they state that the rash and often
1 " Rolls of ParUament," 45 Ed. Ill, year 137 1, vol. ii. p. 306. While
this legislation was strictly enforced in England, the royal government, accord
ing to petitions of the Commons and with remarkable na'iveti, often wrote
to princes on the continent, recommending them to allow their own subjects
to bring to England money, buUion, and plate.
'¦ Statute 5 Rich. II st. i. ch. 3, and 6 Rich. II, year 1 38 1-2.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 241
useless pressing of ships for the king's service had brought
about a most dangerous decrease of the navy ; many
mariners addicting themselves to other trades, while only
" twenty years ago, and always before, the shipping of the
Realm was in all the ports and good towns upon the sea
or rivers, so noble and plenteous that all the countries
held and called our said sovereign : the King of the Sea
{le Roi de la Mier)." ' As these were trading ships, only
occasionally used for war purposes, this gives an idea
of the importance to which British merchant shipping
had risen in the fourteenth century and which it desired
to recover. The rules concerning foreign merchants coming to
England were in the same manner constantly changed ;
sometimes the hardest restrictions were put upon them,
and sometimes everything was done to allure them to
come. The result was the same ; trade was impeded
doubtless, but it went on, and in spite of the un
steadiness of legislation, of retaliatory measures (as
when, for instance, Hanse merchants were imprisoned in
England and their goods seized on account of misdeeds
committed by Prussians, " ceuxde la seigneurie de Pruys,"
no reason of complicity being alleged, but only it seems one
of geographical vicinity 2), in spite of restrictions innumer
able, the intercourse steadily increased, to the great benefit
of the community and the wider diffusion of ideas. In
the ninth, the twenty-fifth, the twenty-seventh, and other
years of his reign. King Edward III again and again
stated that he took foreign merchants under his special
protection : "To replenish the said. realm and lands,"
he said on one of these occasions, " with money and
' " Rolls of Parliament," 46 Ed. Ill, year 1372, vol. ii. p. 311.
' Ibid., II Rich II, a.d. 1387, vol. iU. p. 253. The penalties are
removed for the Hanse merchants but not for the Prussians, " Et en le
mesne temps soient lettre du prive seal envoie al Mestre de Pruys de repaier
et due redresse faire as merchantz Engleis des arestes et autres tortz et damages
a eux fait deinz la seigneurie de Pruys, come reson demande."
16

242 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
plate, gold and silver and merchandises of other lands,
and to give courage to merchants strangers to come with
their wares and merchandises into the Realm and lands
aforesaid, we have ordained and established that all
merchants strangers which be not of our enmity, of what
land or nation that they be, may safely and surely, under
our protection and safe conduct, come and dwell in our
said realm and lands, where they will, and from thence
[freely] return," selling their goods to whom they please,
being exempted from purveyance and only paying the
ordinary customs.' If war is declared between England
and their country, they will have forty days to quit the
realm, during which time they shall be allowed to con
tinue their sales, and even more delay will be allowed
them in case they are ill, or are detained by bad weather.
This last was, as we have seen, a very necessary proviso,
for a merchant coming with his goods in the depth of
winter to a broken bridge might be stopped a rather long
time ; as also if, reaching the sea-coast, he found con
trary winds. The statute of the twenty-fifth year pro
vided that the liberal intentions of the king towards foreign
merchants should be brought by way of proclamation
to the notice of the officers and inhabitants bf all the
English counties, trading cities, seaports, etc.^
Thus protected and impeded by turns, foreign trade
jogged on, and as common interest was, after all, stronger
than popular prejudice and narrow regulations, it managed
to thrive in England. Foreign gilds were established
in London ; foreign settlements were created in several
trading towns, 3 foreign fleets visited the English coasts
' Statute 27 Ed. Ill st. U. ch. 2.
» 25 Ed. Ill stat. Ui. ch. 2.
3 See, for particulars about the " GUdhalda Teutonicorum" in Dowgate
Ward, Thames Street, and afterwards in the Steel-house, Herbert's " Livery
Companies," London, 1837, vol. i. pp. 10-16. The importance of Italian
settlements of money-changers and money-lenders (whence the " Lombard
Streets " or " rues des Lombards " surviving in many towns) are weU known.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 243
at regular intervals, none with more important results
than the fleet of the Venetian Republic. It began to
call regularly at the ports of Flanders, England, and the
North, in the year 1 3 1 7 ; each ship had on board thirty
archers for its defence, commanded by young Venetian
noblemen. There was in the fourteenth century a
Venetian consul at Bruges, and the commander of the
galleys did not fail to put himself in communication with
him. The fleet, or " galleys of Flanders," as it was called,
brought to England cotton from Egypt, cloth of silk
from Venice, cinnamon, pepper, cloves, saffron, camphor,
musk, and other drugs or spices from the East, sugar
from Egypt and Sicily, etc. The trade of Venice in
the eastern Mediterranean was very extensive ; it was
carried on freely, except during occasional wars with
the Saracens, and the commercial interest that the Italian
Republics had in the continuation of a good understanding
with the infidel was one of the principal causes of the
cessation of crusades. From England the Venetian galleys
took back wools and woollen cloths, leather, tin, lead,
sea-coal, cheese,' etc.
The importance of this intercourse with the con
tinent, which fortunately the variations in the laws of
the land were unable to check, gave prominence in the
community to the English merchant. He is already in
the fourteenth century, and has been ever since, one of
the main supports of the State. While the numerous
applications of Edward III to Lombard bankers for ready
money are well known, it is sometimes overlooked how
often he had recourse to English merchants, who supplied
him with that without which his archers' bows would have
remained unstrung. The advice and goodwill of the
' These and many other particulars about English trade with Venice
are to be found in Rawdon Brown's " Calendars of State Papers ... in
the Archives of Venice," London, 1864 (Rolls); see also J. DelaviUe le
Roulx, " La France en Orient au XlV^'siecle," Paris, 1886, vol. i. p. 199.

244 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
whole class of merchants could not be safely ignored ;
therefore their attendance was constantly requested at
Westminster to discuss money and other State matters.
Some families among them rose to eminence, like the
De la Poles of Hull, who became earls of Suffolk with
descendants destined to die at Agincourt, to be checked
by Joan of Arc at Orleans, to be made dukes, and
to be impeached for high treason. It was, too, the time
of " thrice Lord Mayor of London " ' Dick, afterwards
Sir Richard Whittington, who, if we trust the legend,
did not entertain the same feeling as the above-mentioned
pedlars for cats. Another man of the same sort a little
later was the famous William Canynge, of Bristol, who
made a large fortune there in trading with foreign
countries. One of his ships was called the Mary Redcliffe,
a name as well as his own since associated with the memory
of the Bristol boy-poet, Thomas Chatterton.
The feeling that the king of England should be le
Roi de la Mier goes on increasing. The " Libe'le of
Englyshe Polycye," a sort of consular report, written
however in verse, about 1436, is quite positive :
" Kepte (keep) than the see about in speciaUe,
Whiche of England is the rounde walle ;
As thoughe England were lykened to a cite,
And the walle enviroun were the see.
Kepe than the see that is the walle of Englond,
And than is Englonde kepte by Goddes sonde (decision)." «
And those traditions having been continued, Montes
quieu was able to write, in his "Esprit des Lois":
" Other nations have made the interests of commerce
yield to political interests. England has always made
her political interests yield to her commercial ones.
I For the first time in 1397-98. He was a Uberal lender of money
to Kings Henry IV and Henry V.
2 Th. Wright, " Political Poems," Rolls Series, U. 202 ; also edited
by Herzberg and Pauli, Leipzig, 187S.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 245
" This is the people in the world that has best known
how to avail itself of these three great things : religion,
commerce, and liberty." '
Below men in such exalted situations as a Whittington
(praised to the skies in the " Libelle ") or a Canynge,
the bulk of the merchant community throve as best they
could. One of the necessities of their avocation was
constant travelling. They were to be met along the
roads almost as much as their poorer brothers the pedlars.

A RICH MERCHANT TRAVELLING (cHAUCER's MARCHAUNT) .
{From the EUesmere MS.)
They also made great use of the water-courses, and
carried their goods by boat whenever possible. Hence
the constant interference of the Commons with the erection
of new mills, weirs, and other hindrances on rivers by the
owners of the adjoining lands. The " Rolls of Parlia
ment " are full of petitions asking for the complete sup
pression of all new works of this sort as being detrimental
to the " common passage of ships and boats on the great
rivers of England," or stating that " the merchants who
' Bk. XX, chap. 7 : " Esprit de I'Angleterre sur le Commerce."

246 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
frequent the water between London and Oxford used to
have free passage on the Thames from London to
Oxford, with their ships to carry their goods and to serve
the commonalty and the people, but now they are dis-
"turbed by weirs, locks, mills, and many other hindrances." '
The reasons why merchants preferred such a conveyance
were that the cost of carriage was less ; that, save for the
occasional meeting of unexpected locks and weirs, they
were more certain than on ordinary roads to find before
them a clear course ; and that they were better able to
protect themselves against robbers.
They could not, however, go everywhere by water,
and willingly or not they had then to betake themselves
to the roads, and incur all the mischances that might
turn up on the way or at the inn. In his " Visions,"
Langland describes how one of his mischievous characters
once rifled at the inn the boxes of travelling chapmen;
" ' Thus, ones I was herberwed,' quod he • ' with an hep of
chapmen,
I roos whan thei were arest (having their rest) ¦ and yrifled here
males ' " (their trunks).
Repentance, who had just been asking if his interlocutor
had never made " restitucioun," wonders at this strange
statement as to how things went on at the inn :
" That was no restitucioun, quod Repentance ¦ but a robberes
thefte."
To which the careless creature retorts in a way that
reminds one of Chaucer's French of Stratford-atte-Bow :
" ' I wende (beUeved) ryflynge were restitucioun,' quod he • ' for
I lemed nevere rede on boke.
And I can no Frenche in feith • but of the ferthest end of
Norfolke.' " >

' " Rolls of Pariiament," 25 Ed. Ill, year 1350, and Ed. I or II anno
incerto, vol. ii. p. 232 and vol i. p. 475.
2 Text B, pas. v. 1. 232.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 247
Between the " male " of these chapmen and the mere
pack of the pedlar the difference is not considerable ;
it is not very great either if compared to the " male "
of the merchant we have met before, who travels slowly
on account of an encumbrance represented by the poet as
the emblem of " men that ben ryche." So that these
three links kept pretty close together the chain of the
it' nerant trading community. They all had to go about
and to experience the gaieties or dangers of the road,
the latter being of course better known to the richer sort
than to the poor Bob Jakin of the day. The reasons
for this constant travelling were numerous ; the same
remark applies to merchants of the fourteenth century
as to almost all other classes : there was much less journey
ing than to-day for mere pleasure's sake, but very
much more, comparatively, out of necessity. We cannot
underrate the causes of personal journeys suppressed by
the post and telegraph (and telephone, unheard-of when
the present work was first published), with the money
and other facilities they have introduced. But besides
the lack thereof, the staple and fairs were, in the four
teenth century, potent causes impelling merchants to
move about.
The staple was the subject of constant regulations,
complaints, new regulations and new complaints. The
fundamental law concerning it is the well-known statute
of 1353, the mechanism of which the following extracts
will show :
" We (i.e. the king and Parliament) have ordained
. . . first, that the staple of wools, leather, woolfels,
and lead, growing or coming forth within our said realm
and lands, shall be perpetually holden at the places under
written, that is to say, for England at Newcastle-upon-
Tyne, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster, Canterbury,
Chichester, Winchester, Exeter, and Bristow ; for Wales
at Kaermerdyn ; and for Ireland at Dublin, Waterford,

248 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Cork, and Drogheda, and not elsewhere ; and that all
the said wools, as well old as new, woolfels, leather,
and lead, which shall be carried out of the said realm and
lands shall be first brought to the said staples, and there
the said wool and lead, betwixt merchant and merchant
or merchant and others, shall be lawfully weighed by the
standard ; and that every sack and sarpler of the same
wools so weighed be sealed under the seal of the mayor
of the staple."
Any English may bring and sell wool at the staple ;
but only foreign merchants are allowed to take it out of
the realm. It is prohibited to stop carriages and goods
going to the staple. It is ordained also " that in every
town where the staple shall be holden, shall be ordained
certain [streets] and places where the wools and other
merchandises shall be put ; and because that the lords
or guardians of the houses and places, seeing the
necessity of merchants do set percase their houses at
too high ferm, we have ordained that the houses which
be to be leased in such manner, shall be set at a reason
able ferm," after the estimation of the local authority,
assisted by four discreet men of the place.' It need
scarcely be said that the staple was often removed from
one town to another, from England to Calais and from
Calais to England, etc., according to inscrutable whims
and fancies, and with very detrimental results for all
traders. The fairs, the very name of which can scarcely fail
to awaken ideas of merry bustle, gay clamour, and joyous
agitation, were subjected to no less stringent regula
tions, so that the word reminded many people not merely
of pleasure but also of fines, confiscations, and prison.
' Statute 2 of 27 Ed. Ill, a.d. 1353. Canterbury was made a staple
town " en I'onur de Saint Thomas," " Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 253,
same year. As an example of the changes affecting the staple system, see
the statute 2 Ed. Ill, chap. 9 (a.d. 1328), by which all staples were aboUshed
— for a time.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 249
When the time came for a fair, no sale was permitted
in the town except at the fair, under pain of the goods
exhibited being seized. All the ordinary shops were
to be closed. Such regulations were meant not only
to insure the largest possible attendance at the fair, but
also to secure for the lord of it the entirety of the tolls
he had a right to.
An inquest holden at Winchester, famous for its
St. Giles's fair, gives an idea of the manner in which
these commercial festivities were solemnized. The fair
belonged to the Bishop of Winchester. On the eve
of St. Giles's Day, at early dawn, the officers of the
bishop went about the town announcing the conditions
of the fair, which were these : no merchant was to sell
or exhibit for sale any goods in the town, or at a distance
of seven leagues round it, except inside the gates of the
fair. The same proclaimed the assise of bread, wine,
and ale ; tasted the wine, broke the casks where they
detected " insufficient " wine. They proved all weights
and measures ; they destroyed false ones and fined the
owners. All merchants were to reach the fair not later
than a certain time (the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin
Mary) ; if they came later they were not admitted except
with a special licence from the bishop. The usual allow
ance is made in case they may have been kept back by
a storm at sea, or by some mischance on land, " infor
tunium in terra," which in this time of bad roads, and
of such determined robbers as Sir Robert de Rideware,
was not infrequent. A court of" pie powder," that is, " of
the dusty feet," ' was held in the fair itself, and any suit
arising from transactions or trouble there was determined
' " Pedis puhsrisati curia. Ea est quE in nundinis constituitur, ad
nundinalium rixas litesque celerrime componendas. . . . Dictum pr;pcipue
de mercatoribus vagabundis, qui nundinas pagatim insectantes omnes dis-
currunt provincias, nee sistendi locum agnoscunt, sed de his etiam qui ex
omni parte ad nundinas confluunt." H. Spelman, " Glossarium archai
ologicum," ed. tertia, Londini, 1687, p. 455.

250 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
by this tribunal at once, and without appeal. Similar rules
were in existence at the Westminster fair, and at many
others.' The importance of these meetings is shown
by the constant recurrence in the " Rolls of Parliament "
of petitions concerning them, beseeching the king to
grant a fair to a certain lord or to a certain town, or to
suppress a neighbouring town's fair, for fear it may hurt
the petitioners' own.
People from the counties and from the continent
flocked to the fairs. The largest and the more widely
known were those of Winchester,^ Abingdon for cattle,
Bartholomew fair s in Smithfield (London), Stourbridge
fair, the most important of all, Weyhill, mentioned in
Langland's " Visions," 4 etc. In the time of EUzabeth,
' These and other particulars about the way in • which fairs were
managed at Westminster and Winchester are to be found in a petition with
an inquest of the year 1302, 30 Ed. I, in the " Rolls of Parliament," vol. i.
p. 1 50. The Winchester Fair on St. Giles' hiU, " Montem sancti Egidii,"
was one of the most famous English fairs. Langland mentions it, and gives
a graphic account of the cheating that went on among unscrupulous
merchants. "Visions," Text C, pas. vii. 1. 211.
2 See " Charter of Edward III [as to] St. Giles' Fair, Winchester,"
ed. G. W. Kitchin, London, 1886.
3 This fair, immortalized by Ben Jonson, disappeared only in 1855.
See H. Morley's "Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair" (2nd ed. 1874).
4 Mentioned as " Wy," text C, passus vii. 1. 211. Weyhill fair, near
Andover, Hampshire, " is a famous one to this day, and lasts eight days.
The fair for horses and sheep is on October loth, that for cheese, hops,
and general wares, on October nth and the six days following." W. W.
Skeat, " Vision concerning Piers the Plowman," ii, 83. See a list of English
fairs in Mr. Elton's Report, Market Rights Commission, 1889, vol. i. 5.
There were fairs estabUshed especially for herrings and other fishing produce
at Yarmouth, Scarborough, and other towns on the sea-coast. The rigours
of Lent and the number of fasting days throughout the year gave particular
importance to these articles of consumption. Hence, too, the attention
paid to fisheries and the regulations to prevent the catching of small fish,
the destruction of spavyn and bait, etc. Great complaints are made
against the use of the net called " wondyrchoun," which drags from the
bottom of the sea all the bait " that used to be the food of great fish."
Through means of this instrument fishermen catch " such great plenty of
small fish that they do not know what to do with them, but fatten their pigs

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 251
Harrison, describing England, could not help expressing
his pride in the importance and renown of English fairs,
about which he writes thus : "As there are no great
towns without one weekelie market at the least, so there
are verie few of them that have not one or two faires or
more within the compasse of the yeare, assigned unto
them by the prince. And albeit that some of them are
not much better than Lowse faire or the common Kirke-
messes beyond the sea, yet there are diverse not inferiour
to the greatest marts in Europe, as Sturbridge faire neere
to Cambridge, Bristow faire, Bartholomew faire at London,
Lin mart (Linne), Cold faire at Newport pond for cattell,
and diverse other." In all of which people were kept
merry with ales and beers of various flavour and strength
known by as significant names as those of present day
dances, fox-trot, mother's rest, and others, which to
morrow will, they too, need interpretation : " Such headie
ale and beere in most of them, as for the mightinesse
thereof ... is commonlie called huffe cap, the mad dog,
father whoresonne, angels food, dragon's milke, go by the
wall, stride wide, and lift leg. . . . Neither did Romulus
and Remus sucke their shee wolfe (or sheepheards wife)
Lupa, with such eger and sharpe devotion, as these men
hale at huf cap, till they be red as cockes and little wiser__
than their combs." '
Stourbridge fair belonged to the city and corporation
of Cambridge, and was held in September, lasting three
weeks. Tents and wooden booths were erected at that
time on the open fields, so as to form streets ; each trade
had its own street as in real cities, and as may still be seen
now in the bazaars of the East. Among the principal
articles sold at this fair were : " ironmongery, cloth,
with them." "Rolls of Pariiament," 1376-7, vol. ii. p. 369. As to
salmon fishing in the Thames, see ibid., vol. ii. p. 331, a.d. 1376.
' Harrison's "Description of England," ed. FurnivaU, 1877, first
published 1577, part i. book U. chap xviU. pp. 295, 302.

252 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
wool, leather, books." The last article became in several
fairs an important one when the art of printing spread ;
there was in the North Hundred of Oxford, in the six
teenth century, a fair at which an extensive sale of books
took place, and this, as Professor Thorold Rogers has
observed, is the only way to account for the rapid diffusion
of books and pamphlets at a time when newspapers and
advertisements were practically unknown. " I have more
than once," adds the same authority, " found entries of
purchases for college libraries, with a statement that the
book was bought at St. Giles' fair." ' No reader of
Boswell needs to be reminded how the father of Dr.
Johnson had a booth for book selling on market days
at Uttoxeter, in doing which he was merely keeping up,
as we see, a mediaeval tradition of long standing. How
young Samuel refused once to accompany his father to
the market, and, in after-time, repaired on a rainy day
to the spot, and there did penance, has been a'luded to
before. Even at the present day books continue to be an
article of sale at the fairs in many French villages, and
sheets of printed matter are taken from thence to cottages,
where, under the smoky light burning in winter by the
fireside, people, not very dissimilar to their forefathers
of five hundred years ago, look at the image of mediaeval
heroes and of the worthies of the world, by the side of
whom now begins to appear that of the heroes of the
Great War.
To the fairs, along with mummers, jugglers, tumblers,
beggars, and the whole of the catchpenny tribe, the pedlar
was sure to resort, in the approved Autolycus fashion.
" He haunts," says the clown in " Winter's Tale,"
" wakes, fairs, and bear-baiting." There he might exhibit
" ribands of all the colours i' the rainbow ; points, more
' " History of Agriculture and Prices in England," vol. iv. chap. iv.
p. 155. As to Stourbridge fair, ibid. vol. i. chap. vii. p. 141.

MESSENGERS, MERCHANTS AND PEDLARS 253
than all the lawyers in Bohemia can learnedly handle,
though they come to him by the gross ; inkles, caddisses,
cambricks, lawns. Why, he sings them over, as they
were gods or goddesses ; you would think a smock were
a she-angel, he so chants to the sleeve hand, and the work
about the square on't." ' So that everybody might
remark, as does the honest clown to fair Perdita, " You
have of these pedlars that have more in them than you'd
think, sister." A favourable view, adopted, magnified,
sublimated by another great poet whose Wanderer is a
pedlar, but what a pedlar and what a part does he not
play in the community !
" By these Itinerants, as experienced men.
Counsel is given ; contention they appease
With gentle language ; in remotest wilds.
Tears wipe away, and pleasant tidings bring ;
Could the proud quest of chivalry do more .? " ^
Less aspiring most of them, not unsatisfied with their
lot, careless of robbers, having few wants, pedlars of the
past plodded the miry roads of Plantagenet England,
as they did in the time of Shakespeare, merrily singing
some " Winter Tale " ditty :
" Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way.
And merrily hent the stile-a :
A merry heart goes all the day.
Your sad tires in a mile-a."

I "Winter's Tale," iv. 3. Cf "The foure Ps," by John Heywood,
London, 1545, one of the " Ps " is a pedlar, whose wares are enumerated
in fuU. 2 Wordsworth, " The Excursion," Bk. viii.

FOREST LIFE. WOOD-CUTTERS.
{From the MS. lo E. IV.)

CHAPTER III
OUTLAWS, WANDERING WORKMEN, AND
PEASANTS OUT OF BOND

THE mountebanks, the musicians, and their fellows
have stayed us at the street corners, in the castle
halls and courtyards ; the pedlars have led us to
the peasants' cots, the fairs and markets. With the out
laws we must leave the highroad for the pathless woods,
fens and solitudes.
England at that time was not the immense meadow,
furrowed by railways, of the present day ; there still
remained much of those forests spoken of by Caesar in
his Commentaries, and where the Plantagenet kings and
their predecessors had so jealously maintained their rights
of the chase. The woods were not so well policed as
they are now ; they offered to bandits and men fleeing
from justice a more extensive asylum than any six-
circled sanctuary. In the popular mind the idea of
the great rustling forest, and the idea of the free life
254

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 255
that the outlaws led there, were often mingled in one
and the same sentiment of sympathy. Besides, therefore,
the praise of the Arthurian heroes, is found in the poetry
of the time that of the trees and bushes, that of the valiant
men who, dwelling in the copse, were supposed to have
struggled for the public liberties, Hereward, Fulk Fitz-
Warin, Robin Hood. Were a man pursued, if the
sanctuary was too far or not to his taste, he took to the
forest ; it was easier to get there, he remained nearer
to his kin, and was about as safe as if he had crossed
over to the continent.
Robbers, bandits, poachers, knights in trouble might
thus meet as comrades in the depths of the wood. The
forest is the first thought of the proscribed squire in the
" Nut Brown Maid," the masterpiece of English poetry in
the fifteenth century, a musical duet of love, full of the
wild charm of the great forest, with a well-accented
cadence, frequent rhymes and assonances charming the ear
as the oft repeated rustling of the forest leaves. On the
verge of capture, the poor squire is fain to choose between
a shameful death and retreat into " the grene wode."
His betrothed, who is nothing less than a baron's daughter,
wishes to follow him ; and then, in every couplet, her
lover, in order to try her, pictures to her the terrors and
dangers of the fugitive's life ; she may perhaps see him
taken and die a robber's death :
" For an outlawe this is the lawe, that men hym take and binde
Wythout pytee, hanged to bee, and waver with the wynde."
With this, a thrilling description of the life in the woods,
of the brambles, snow, hail, rain; no soft bed; for roof
the leaves alone :
" Yet take good hede, for ever I drede, that ye coude not sustein
The thorney wayes, the depe valeis, the snowe, the frost, the reyn.
The cold, the hete ; for drye or wete we must lodge on the playn ;
And, us above, noon other roue (roof), but a brake, bussh or twayne."

256 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
No delicate food, but only such as the wood affords ;
" For ye must there in your hande bere a bowe redy to drawe,
And as a theef thus must ye lyve, ever in drede and awe."
Worse even, and the trial becomes harder ; the young-
girl must cut off her lovely hair ; life in the forest does
not allow of that ornament. Lastly, to crown all : I
have already in the forest another sweetheart, whom I
love better, and who is more beautiful. But, as resigned
as Griselda, the betrothed replies : I shall go none the
less into the forest ; I will be kind to your sweetheart,
I will obey her, " for in my mynde, of all mankynde,
I love but you alone." Then the lover's joy breaks out :
" I wyl not too the grene wod goo, I am noo banysshyd
man," I am not an obscure squire, but the son of the
Earl of Westmoreland, and the hour of our wedding is
now come.'
All the fugitives whom the forest received into its
depths were not romantic knights, followed by baronesses
patient as Griselda and brave as Bradamante. To pass
from poetry to real facts, they were for the greater part
formidable rovers, the same against whom Edward I
and Edward III had enacted the rigorous law for suspects ^
mentioned above. This caste was composed, first of the
organized bands of brigands whom the statute cal's
Wastours, Roberdesmen, and Drawlatches, then of
thieves, sharpers, and malefactors of all kinds, of
outlaws of various sorts, suffering that civil death
alluded to by the lover in the " Nut Brown Maid."
The sentence of outlawry was usually the starting-
point for a wandering life, which by necessity became a
life of brigandage. To be declared an outlaw, a crime
I " The Nut Brown Maid," in Skeat's " Specimens of English Litera
ture," Clarendon Press, 1887, p. 96.
2 Statute of Winchester, 13 Edward I, chap, iv., confirmed by
Edward III. See before p. 156.

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 257
or a misdemeanor must have been committed ; a private
suit of a purely civil character was not enough ; ' but
to come within sight of the gallows, no great guilt was
necessary ; hence the large number of outlaws. In a
criminal lawsuit of the time of Edward I ^ the judge
explains from his bench that the law is this : if the thief
has taken anything worth more than twelve pence, or if
he has been condemned several times for little thefts, and
the total may be worth twelve pence or more, he ought
to be hanged : " The law wills that he shall be hanged
by the neck." Still, as the judge observes in the case of
a woman who had stolen a carpet lying on a hedge,
worth eightpence, the law is milder than in the days of
Henry III, for then a theft of the value of fourpence would
hang a man. 3
The man became an outlaw, and the woman a weyve,
that is, abandoned to the mercy of every one and unable
to claim the protection of justice. The author of" Fleta "
expresses with terrible force the condition of persons so
punished ; they have wolves heads which may be cut
off with impunity : " For she is a weyve whom no one
will own, and it is equivalent to outlawry so far as penal
consequences go. An outlaw and a weyve bear wolves
' " Item videtur nulla esse utlagaria si factum, pro quo interrogatus
est, civile sit et non criminale." Bracton, Rolls Series, vol. ii. p. 330.
» "Year Books of Edward I." Rolls Series, years 30-31, p. 533.
3 " Year Books of Edward I," Rolls Series, years 30-31, pp. 537-538.
In the case of this woman, freedom was granted " propter parvitatem delicti,"
and because she had been one year in prison ; and no confiscation took place,
because her husband was absent in Paris, and it would have been inappro
priate to, maybe, wrong that man who was, like every husband, the owner
of his wife's chattels. " Et nota," beautifully adds the judge (or the re
porter), " quod melius est nocentem relinquere impunitum quam innocentem
punire." But the court, at the same time, fines an innocent, known to it
as such, for fear of displeasing the king ; a circumstance that the recorder
is bold enough to note down : " Et nota quod fecerunt hoc Justiciarii magis
ad appruyamentum (profit, for the king got the money) Regis faciendum
quam ad legem minutenendum, quia hoc dixeiunt in terrorem." Ibid.
pp. 503-507. 17

258

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

heads, which may be cut off by any one with impunity,
for deservedly ought they to perish without law who
would refuse to live according to law." ' The outlaw
lost all his property and rights ; all the contracts to which
he was a party fell void ; he was no longer bound to any
one nor anybody bound to him. His goods were forfeit :
" the chattels of an outlaw shall belong to our lord the
king " ; if he had lands the king kept the usufruct for
a year and a day, at the end of which he restored them
to the chief 'ord {capitalis dominus').'^ There were also
hard legal rules on this subject ; a man accused of murder
and acquitted suffered confiscation nevertheless, if he
had fled, fearing justice. Listen to the magistrate :

FOREST LIFE  A SHOOTING CASUALTY.
[From the MS. 10 E. IV.)
If a man be acquitted of manslaughter and of assent
and he^p, the justices shall thereupon ask the jury if the
prisoner took to flight ; if they say No, let him go quits,
if YeSj the king shall have his chattels." 3 It may be
' " Fleta," lib. i. chap, xxvii.
2 " Bracton," vol. ii. pp. 340-342.
3 "Year Books of Edward I," year 30-31, p. 515 Sometimes a
man would profit by the absence of an enemy on the continent and affirm
to a magistrate that he was in flight, and cause him to be declared an out
law ; thus the priest, John Crochille, complains to parliament of having
been unjustly outlawed during a journey which he had made to the Court
of Rome, in 1347 ("RoUs of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 178); the priest,
Robert of Thresk, is also declared outlaw during his absence from the king
dom, " by the malice of his accusers " (ibid., 1347, vol. ii. p. 183). John
of Gaunt orders the restitution of his goods to " ncstre tenant neif, Johan
Piers," whose belongings had been seized, " a cause q'il deust estre ullage,
a ce q'est dit, et ore U nous e§t gertjfip par recorde, q'il p'est pas utlage,"

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 259
readily believed that the draconian severity of such regu
lations was not calculated to lessen the audacity of those
whom they concerned; and that the excessive rigour of
these penalties would often transform the fugitive of a
day, who had doubted the clear-sightedness of the judge.
into a professional brigand and highway robber.
Besides people of this kind there were the rovers,
who, without being threatened with outlawry, had fled
the village or the farm to which they belonged. The
villein who, without special licence, left his master's
domain, could resume his previous life and intercourse
with his kin, only by placing himself at his lord's mercy,
or, which was less risky, after having passed a year and a
day in a free town without leaving it and without the
lord, often unaware of the place, having interrupted the
prescription. In this latter case he became a free man,
and the ties which bound him to the soil were broken.
But if he confined himself to wandering from place to
place he might be re-taken any day that he reappeared
at his own door.
An example of this may be seen in a characteristic
lawsuit of the time of Edward I, a report of which has
come down to us : — A presents a writ of imprisonment
against B. Heiham, counsel for B, says : It is not for
us to defend ourselves, A is our villein, his writ cannot
take effect against us. This is verified, it is found that
A is the son of a villein of B, that he ran away, and several
years afterwards returned home, " to his nest," where he
was taken as a villein. The judge declares that this
-seizure was legal ; that a villein might wander about
during six, seven years or more, but if at the end he were
found " in his own nest and at his hearth," he might be
seized as continuing to be his lord's lawful property ;
the fact of his return put him into the condition he was
Oct. 12, 1374. "John of Gaunt's Register," ed. S, Armitage Smith,
document 1544.

26o ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
in before his departure. On hearing this decision the
delighted counsel appropriately cites the scripture, '' He
fell into the pit which he hath digged." '
At that period a villein could still be sold as chattel,
given away as a present, donated to a convent for the
benefit of one's soul : "I Hugo de Ringesdon . . . gave
and conceded ... to God and Blessed Mary and the
Abbot and convent of Sulby, for the salvation of my soul
and that of my ancestors and successors, in perpetual
frank almoigne, Robert son of Juliana de Walton, with
all his sequel and all his chattels, nothing remaining
of any bond with me or my successors for ever." ^
Or again : " Be it known to all, now and hereafter,
that I John, son of Thomas [of Wurtham], have sold
... to Hugo abbot of Saint Edmunds . . . Serval, son
of William of Wurtham with all his sequel . . . and
all the tenement which he held from me ... for sixteen
shillings of silver which the said abbot gave me." 3
If the actual sale of a man, sold as such, was in
frequent, the transfer of a tenement, tenant included,
' " Cecidit in foveam quam fecit." Psalm vii. i6 : " cecidit" should be
"incidit." " Year Books," Edward I, year 21-22, p. 447. In another case,
counsel delighted at a statement of the judge, exclaims in his ioy : " Beatus
venter qui te portavit." Ibid. p. 437. Judges sometimes indulged in
familiar speech, bets and witticisms : " I will wager a cask of wine on it."
" If you find it, I will give you my hood." " Year Books of Edward II,"
ed. G. J. Turner, Selden Society, 1914, years 13 10— 13 11, pp. 44, 168.
^ Late thirteenth century, in Madox, " Formulare Anglicanum,"
London, 1702, fol., p. 416.
3 " Sciant presentes et futuri quod ego Johannes fiUus Thome vendidi
et quietum clamavi de me et heredibus meis dcmino Hugoni abbati Sancti
Edmundi et successoribus suis inprimum Servalum filium WiUielmi de Wur
tham cum tota sequela sua et omnibus catallis suis et cum toto tenemento
quod de me tenuit in Wurtham sine uUo retenemento pro stxdecim solidis
argenti quos idem abbas michi dedit. Et ut hee mea vendicio . . . firma
sit . . . presentem cartam meam feci . . ." Temp. Ed. I, MS. Addit.
14850, in the British Museum fol. 59. "The existing evidence," says
Vinogradoff, " entitles one to maintain that a villain could be lawfully sold,
with all his family, his sequela, but that in practice such transactions were
uncommon." " ViUainage in England," Oxford, 1892, p. 151.

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 261
was of constant occurrence ; the man and his kin
changed hands as the plot of land to which he was bound.
The monastery of Meaux, near Beverley, having claimed,
against the abbot of St. Mary of York, the right to fish
in the Wathsand and Hornsey meres, and no satisfactory
proof being available on either side, recourse was had
by the two religious disputants to judicial duel. The
combat was severe : "It took place at York and lasted
from morning to evening, our champion," says the Meaux
chronicler, " slowly succumbing." Before complete defeat,
however, " the duel was interrupted by the cleverness of
a certain judge, Roger de Thurkelby, a friend of ours " ;
Meaux yielded the fishing rights to York, but York
" granted us one toft, with a man holding that toft in
villeinage, and his sequel." '
The change in customs made the separate sale of
the man himself practically impossible in the fourteenth
century,^ but the adscriptio gleb^e remained imperative,
and every means was taken to prevent the villeins from
uprooting themselves and ceasing to be, like their own
trees, fixtures liable to change masters with the trees.
The villein's highest desire was of course manu
mission and complete independence : a dream so ambitious
that most of them scarcely dared to form it, up to the
time of the peasants' revolt, when it became general,
' " Chronica Monasterii de Melsa," Rolls, U. 97 ff., the case being of
the second half of the thirteenth century. The duel was, of course, one
cum fuste et scuto, the fighters clubbing each other to their best, as in the
case of the before mentioned Thomas de Bruges. Above, p. 117.
* The year books of Edward I show a marked tendency in the judge
to interpret the laws and customs in a sense favourable to the freeing of the
villein. One of the harsh theories of form^er days is declared by him " peius
quam falsum pur ce qe ce est heresie." " Year Books of Ed. I," years 30—
31, A.D. 1302, ed. Horwood, Rolls, p. 167. See also, in the vol. for the
years 34—35, the suit p. 13. But the judge could act thus only in doubtful
cases : a man having acknowledged, in the presence of his master, that he
was a viUein, the judge says to the master : " Prenez le par le ecu, comme
votre vilain, lui et sa descendance a toujouis." Vol. for the years 30-31,
p. 201.

262 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
and was realized — for a day. Second to that he wanted
the commutation for a cash payment of the harassing
personal labour due by him to his lord, a change which
went on increasingly in the course of the fourteenth
century.' When neither was possible and the burden
became unbearable, he would, happen what may, try
to escape and live elsewhere unknown and masterless.*
The villein, when in this mood, had two great temp
tations, the cities with their franchise, which even his
master did not dare infringe, 3 and the forest, where he was
out of reach. Noblemen sometimes allowed their villeins
to become merchants and go from city to city. They were
very near freedom, but not quite free ; they had to pay
" chevage " to their master as a sign of subjection,
and if these serfs ceased to pay, the mere fact made them
runaways, "just like domestic cerfs (red deer)," says
Bracton, indulging in an, even then, antiquated pun.
They can be run after and captured like any domestic
animal. 4
' See an example of such commutation, with a tariff established, " ex
antiqua et usitata consuetudine," for various services according to the season,
for oats to be supplied to the lord (the abbot of Bury), etc., in MS. Addit.
14850, British Museum, fol. 143 ; year 1438.
' This was a last resort, more and more frequently adopted however,
especially after the plague. As Mr. Oman has justly observed, by natural
disposition the villeins " were reluctant to abscond and throw up their
share of the manorial acres, for only in extremity will the peasant, who has
once got a grip on the soil, consent to let it go." " The Great Revolt of
1 38 1," Oxford 1906, p. 9.
3 " A . . . n. S"^ le Roi et Seigneurs de Parlement monstrent les chivalers
des countees en ycest present Parlement, que come les Seigneurs parmy
le Roialme d'Engleterre eient plusours vileins queux s'enfuont de'lour
Seigneurs et de lour terres en diverses citees et burghs enfranchisez, de jour
en autre, et la demuront tout lour vies, par cause desqueux franchises les
ditz Seigneurs ne pount aprocher lour ditz vileins. . . ." They want to be
enabled to forcibly take them back. Their petition is rejected : " Le Roi
s'advisera." 15 Rich. II, "Rolls of Parliament," iii. p. 296.
4 " Ad similitudinem cervorum domesticorum." — " Henrici de Brac
ton, De I/Cgibus et Consuetudinibus Anglic Libri V," ed. Travers Twiss,
London, 1878, i. p. 48.

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS. OUT OF BOND 263
Scarcely less tempting was the forest. Escaped
peasants provided the wandering class with its most
numerous recruits. In England several causes, the chief
of which was the great plague of 1349,' had in the four
teenth century upset the relations of the working classes
with the rich, and the proportions between the rate of
wages and the cost of necessaries. Confronted with a
longing for emancipation which arose on all sides, parlia
ment — the House of Commons as willingly as the king —
passed stern laws for the maintenance of the statu quo
ante pestem. Thence came among the various sorts of
peasants, both the villeins bound to their plot of land
(" theirs " with the understanding they should perform
the customary services due to the lord), and the landless
labourers free to hire themselves out for wages, an
immense desire to move about and see other parts. In
their own hamlet, they found, nothing was to be got
but the same obligations and the same wages as before
the plague ; but in such another county, they heard or
supposed, there were better pay and less exacting
masters ^ ; besides, why not mingle with the class of
free labourers ? It was numerous and increased un-
' According to Seebohm (" The Black Death and its place in English
History," two articles in the Fortnightly Review in 1S65), more than half
of the population died during the epidemic which had begun in July 1348
and lasted till the end of 1349. Three archbishops of Canterbury died in
one year. Knyghton, a contemporary, gives a striking picture of the plague
at Leicester. " There were scarcely any who took heed of riches or cared
for anything. . . . And sheep and oxen wandered through the fields and
among the crops ; there was no one to go after and collect them ; but there
perished an untold number in out of the way ^ditches and under hedges."
In the autumn the price of labour was so exorbitant that a large part of the
crops were left on the ground (Twysden's " Decem Scriptores," col. 2599).
" Through this pestUence," say the Commons in Parliament, " cities, boroughs
and other towns and hamlets throughout the land have decayed, and from
dzy to day are decaying and several are entirely depopulated." 25 Ed. Ill,
A.D. 13 51, "RoUs of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 227.
» See a concrete example of such reports being brought from the north
to the south by pilgrims, further, p. 279.

264 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
ceasingly, in spite of the law. All did not succeed in
concealing their past ; and when the danger of being
" put into stocks " and sent back to their masters became
great, they fled again, changed county and became roamers.
Others, discontented with or without cause, only quitted
their place to become straightway homeless vagabonds
of the most dangerous kind. Thus in the precincts of
Westminster, the chapter house of the Abbey where the
Commons sat, resounded with ever new complaints against
the increasing lawlessness of peasants and labourers of
all sorts. The Commons, who, generally speaking, repre
sented the landowners of the country, and a trading
bourgeoisie ' with somewhat aristocratic tendencies, rose
with force against the wishes for freedom of a class of
workers whom they in no way represented. They were
for the re-establishment of all the old laws and customs,
and the strict rejection of new demands. But the current
was too strong, and it swept by the laws, ever renewed
and ever inefficient.
The plague was still raging. Parliament could not
meet ; the thinning of the ranks of the workers by death,
and the excessive wage demands, or refusals to work at
all, of the survivors, who preferred to live on alms, created
such a dangerous state of confusion that the king issued,
on his own authority and that of his council in June 1 349,
an ordinance which formed the basis of the famous Statute
of Labourers of 1351 ^ and of all the subsequent ones.
' As shown by the surnames of the members, at that period ; innum^erous
cases, a mere indication of profession : Johannes le Baker, Galfiidus le
Fisshere, Johannes le Carpenter, Robertus Chaundeler, Ricardus Orfevre,
Radulphus le Taverner, etc. " Return of the names of every member
returned to serve in every Parliament," London, 1878, a blue book, pp. 18,
31, 146 and passim ; on p. 229, duly appears, as a knight of the shire, for
Kent, " Galfridus Chauceres."
' Both documents, the first in Latin, the second in French, in " Statutes
of the Realm " ; a text, revised on the originals, is in the Appendix to Miss
Bertha H. Putnam's " Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers during
the first Decade after the Black Death," New York, 1908, pp. 8* and 12*.

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 265
The most striking of its dispositions aimed at an outright
conscription of labour, something like what we have
seen of late, under the pressure of necessity, on the
occasion of what has been for the world an even greater
calamity :
" Any man or woman, in our realm of England, of
whatever condition, either free or servile, sound in body
and under the age of sixty years, living not by merchandise
nor practising a definite craft, nor having personally
wherewith to live, nor possessing land which he would
cultivate, nor being somebody else's servant, if he is
requested to serve in a service congruent to his status,
shall be bound to serve the one that shall thus request
him." He is moreover forbidden to receive any wages
or compensations different from those of the twentieth
year of the King's reign, that is those which were barely
sufficient before the plague and were entirely inadequate
now. Later in the year, a new ordinance forbade any
one to leave the desolated realm, " unless he were a mer
chant, a notary or an undoubted messenger." '
The Commons could not imagine that, for mere
villeins, there might be such a thing as necessity, and
they uniformly attributed the new requests to the "malice
of servants," who exacted both higher wages and other
terms of engagement than before. They would not
work " without taking hire that was too outrageous." ^
' The taking of money out of the realm was especiaUy feared : " Quam-
plures ejusdem regni nostri cum pecunia quam in eodem regno habere
poterunt, ad partes exteras in dies se transferunt et transferre proponunt."
Dec. X, 1349, Rymer's " Foedera," vol. v. p. 668.
2 " Rolls of Parliament, vol. ii. p. 233. Compare the French ordinances ;
that of John the Good, January 30, 1350 (Isambert, " Recueil general
des- anciennes lois frangiises," iv. p. 576), orders the idle people of Paris,
picturesquely described as " gens oiseux ou joueurs de dez ou enchanteurs
(singers) es rues ou truandans ou mandians, de quelque estat ou condition
qu'ils soient, ayans mestier ou non, soient hommes ou femmes," to either
work or go away, which was less radical and still less to the point than the
English rules. Another order of the same king (Nov. 1354, ibid. p. 700)

266 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Formerly they hired themselves for a year ; now they
wanted to remain their own masters and to hire them
selves by the day : the statute forbids them to do so.
Three years later the complaints are renewed ; '
the value of corn is very low and labourers refuse to
receive it as payment ; they persist also in desiring day
hire ; all these doings are condemned once more. The
quarrel continues and grows embittered. In the thirty-
fourth year of his reign Edward III threatens to have
the guilty branded on the forehead with an F, as a sign
of " fauxine " (falsehood). ^ In 1372, Parliament declares
that " labourers and servants flee from one county to
another, some go to the great towns and become artificers,
some into strange districts to work, on account of the
excessive wages, none remaining for certain in any place,
whereby the statute cannot be put in execution against
them." 3
The Commons of the Good Parliament of 1376
secured the confirmation of all the previous statutes.
Prohibitions were renewed against any going out of their
" own district " {^ays propre), whether they were villeins
proper, or " labourers and artificers and other servants."
The economic changes that had taken place had rendered
possible, however, what was not so formerly ; labourers
were wanted, and it was not rare to find landowners who
employed them in spite of the laws, even by the day,
and at other wages than those of the tariff. The parlia
mentary petitions declare that " they are so willingly
was directed against the workmen who since the plague were exact
ing exorbitant wages, and, in addition to that, " wine, meat and other un
wonted things." If denied, they preferred to do nothing but would go
to taverns and there had been heard to say that, " owing to the great price
they are accustomed to take, they will work only two days a week," a kind
of difficulty which, dating back six centuries, is not entirely of the past,
I " RoUs of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 261, parliament of 1354.
2 Statute 34 Ed. Ill, chap. 10, a.d. 1360— i.
3 "Rolls of Parliament," ii. p. 312.

xul)^ nu ^IlifctftolHtit

iiiiiitaiii|rm_ljt^t

I ¦

REAPING TIME. IP- 267.
[Ptoni the MS. 2 B. vii. Fourteenth Century.)
We haue the pavne and traveyle, rayne and wynd in the feldes." (John Ball's speech in Berner's Froissart.)

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 269
received in strange places suddenly into service, that
this reception gives example and comfort to all servants,
as soon as they are displeased with anything, to run from
master to master into strange places, as is aforesaid."
And this would not go on, observe the Commons, if when
they offered their services in this fashion they were " taken
and put in the stocks.' True, indeed, but the landowners
who needed help, and whose crops were waiting on the
ground, were too happy to meet with " servantz corores "
(runaway), whoever they might be ; and instead of taking
them " to the nearest gaol," to pay and use them.
The labourers knew it, and their traditional masters had
to show less severity. For on some unreasonable demand
or over-strong reprimand, instead of submitting as for
merly, or venturing a protest, the workman said nothing
but, " par grande malice," went away ; " As soon as their
masters challenge them with bad service or offer to pay
them for their service according to the form of the said
statutes, they flee and run away suddenly out of their
service and out of their own district, from county to
county, from hundred to hundred, from town to town,
in strange places unknown to their said masters.'' '
Worse still, and inevitable, many among them, un
able or unwilling to work, took up begging or robbing
as a profession. These " wandering labourers become
mere beggars in order to lead an idle life, and betake
themselves out of their district commonly to the cities,
boroughs, and other good towns to beg, and they are
able-bodied and might wel ease the community if they
would serve."
' " Rolls of Parliament," ii. p. 340, a.d. 1376. To have them out
lawed brings no relief to their masters, for they manage not to be caught
and carefully avoid the places where they are known : " Et sijes ditz ser
vantz corores soient utiagez a la sute de la partie, U n'est profit al sutour,
ne damage ne chastiement al servant futyf, par cause q'ils ne poont estre
trovez ne ja ne pensent repeirir en pays la cu ils ont ensi servi," Same
petition.

270 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
So much for the beggars ; ' now for the robbers :
" And the greater part of the said wandering servants
commonly become strong robbers, and their robberies
and felonies increase from one day to another on all sides,"
acting in small bands of " two, three or four together,"
and plundering " simple villages." Energetic measures
must be taken ; let it be prohibited to give alms to this
sort of people, and " let their bodies be put in the stocks •
or taken to the next gao\" to be sent afterwards to where
they belong. Edward III had already condemned to
prison, by his ordinance of 1 349, those who, under colour
of charity " sub colore pietatis vel elernosine," came to
the aid of sturdy beggars, those vagabonds who went
through the country " giving themselves to idleness and
vice, and sometimes to theft and other abominations."
The same complaints recur in the time of Richard II.
Hardly is he on the throne than they are repeated from
year to year : 1377, 1378, 1379, revealing to us the
existence of early unions and federations of villeins and
labourers who, advised by men better informed than them
selves, " lours counseillours, meyntenours et abettours,"
defend their assumed freedom sometimes by force —
" menassent les ministres de lours seignurs de vie et de
membre " — sometimes by law, invoking written texts
and " exemplifications " whose value they have learnt,
and swear to remain " confederated " and to help each
other at all cost against their masters.^
' Langland shows, in the same way, the shameless beggar who goes,
bag on shoulder, asking from door to door, who may very well if he pleases
gain his bread and beer by work ; he knows a trade, but he prefers not to
exercise it :
" And can som manere craft • in cas he wolde hit uie,
Thorgh whiche craft he couthe • come to bred and to ale."
" Piers Plowmin," Text C, pass. x. 1. 155 ; see also ibid., pass. i. 1. 40.
2 " . . . Par colour de certains exempUficacions faitz hors de livre
de Domesday des manoirs et villes deinz queux Us sont dem.urantz, et par
vertue d'icelles exempUficacicns et loyr male interpretacion d'i.ceUeF, ils;

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 271
Statutes multiplied to no purpose ; the king had to
recognize in his ordinance of 1383 that the "feitors
(idlers) and vagrants " overran the country " more abun
dantly than they were formerly accustomed." ' In 1388
he renewed all the orders of his predecessors, re-enacting
for rustics rules similar to those of the Inscription maritime
still applied to-day in France, for what concerns sea
faring, to the seaside population : any one who reached
the age of twelve without having done anything else
than " working at the plough and cart or other labor
or service of husbandry," will have to continue in this
state his life long, " without being allowed to learn a
trade or handicraft," and if one is found to be a party to
a contract of apprenticeship, the contract shall be void.
The king reminds, at the same time, the mayors,
bailiffs, stewards, and constables of their duties, and asks
them in particular to repair their stocks and keep them
always ready for wanderers to cease in them their
wanderings. 2
No vain threats nor light penalties. The prisons of
those days little resembled the well-washed buildings
now to be seen in most English towns, at York for
instance, where the guilty ones are apt to find more
cleanliness and comfort than they ever knew before.
They were mostly fetid dungeons, where the damp of
the walls and the stationary position compelled by the
irons corrupted the blood and engendered hideous
maladies. Many a wandering workman, accustomed to an active
life and the open air, came thus, thanks to the incessant
s'aferment (affirm) d'estre quites et outrement deschargez de tout manere
de servage due sibien de lour corps come de lour tenures. . . Et qe plus
est, ils se coillient ensembles a gra:ntz routes et s'entrelient par tiel confederacie
qe chescun aidra autre a contester lours seignurs a fort mayn." Rich. II,
chap 6, year 1377 ; " Rolls of Parliament," vol. iii. pp. 17, 46, 65.
I Statute 7 Rich. II, cap. 5.
' Statute 12 Rich. II, cap. 3.

272

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

ord nances of king and Parliament, to repent n the dark
for his boldness, and during days and nights all alike,
to regret his liberty, his family, and his " nest." The
effect of such a treatment on the physical constitution
of the victims may be guessed or imagined, but without
any imagining the reports of justice show it only too
clearly. A roll of the time of Henry III reads, for in
stance, as follows :
" Assizes held at Ludinglond. The jury present that
William le Sauvage took two men, aliens, and one woman,
and imprisoned them at Thorlestan, and detained them
in prison until one of them died in prison, and the other
lost one foot, and the woman lost either foot by putre-

IN THE STOCKS.
[From the MS. 10 E. IV.)
faction. Afterwards he took them to the Court of the
lord the king at Ludinglond to try them by the same
Court. And when the Court saw them, it was loth to
try them, because they were not attached for any robbery
or misdeed for which they cou'd suffer judgment. And
so they were permitted to depart." '
How in such a condition the poor creatures could
depart " and what became of them, the Assize Rolls do
not say. Certain it is that no sort of indemnity was given
' _" Gleanings from the Public Records," by Mr. H. Hewlett, in the
"Antiquary," March, 1882, vol. v. p. 99. Concerning ill-treatment
inflicted on prisoners, see a petit'oT of the Comm.ons, i Ed. Ill, a.d.
1326-7, " RoUs of Parliament," vol. ii. pp. 9, 12.

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 273
to help them out of trouble in their horrible condition.
The justice of our fathers did not stop at trifles.
The stocks, which according to the laws of Richard II
were always to be kept in good condition ready for use,
consisted of two beams placed one on the other. At proper
intervals round holes were cut ; the upper beam was
raised, and the legs of the prisoners were passed through
the holes ; sometimes there was a third beam, in the
openings of which the wrists of the wretches were also
caught ; the body sometimes rested on a stool, some
times on the ground. In certain places the stocks were
pretty high ; the sufferer's legs were placed in them and
he remained thus, his body stretched on the ground in
the damp, his head lower than his feet ; but this refine
ment of cruelty was not habitual.'
Stocks are still to be seen in many places in England ;
for instance, in the picturesque village of Abinger, where
they stand on the green, near the churchyard. Others
in a very good state of preservation are in existence at
Shalford, near Guildford. They have not long ceased
to be used in England ; vagabonds and drunkards were
seen in them within the memory of men who were not
old when the present book was written. According to
their remembrance people when released felt so benumbed
that they were scarcely able to stand, and experienced
great difficulty in getting away.
But the threat of prisons so unhealthy and of stocks
so unpleasant did not hold back the labourers more and
more weary of being tied to the soil. Every pretext for
leaving their place was welcome ; they even dared to
use that of a devotional journey. They set out, staff in
hand, " under colour of going far on a pilgrimage," and
I See, besides the plates here, representations of these instruments
of punishment in, e.g. Foxe's "Actes and Monuments." London, 1563,
fol. pp. 390, 1272, etc., and in Butler's " Hudibras, adorned with cutts
designed and engraved by Mr. Hogarth," London 1761 ; at p. 140, the
knight and his squire, " check by joul," says the poet, in the stocks.
1 8

274 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
never returned. But a new restraint was to be applied
to tame this turbulent spirit, the obligation for every
one to furnish himself with a kind of letter of travel or
passport, in order to move from one county to another.
None might leave his village if he did not carry a " letter
patent stating the cause of his going and the date of his
return, if he were to return." In other words, even with
the right to go and settle definitively elsewhere, a permit

THE STOCKS AT SHALFORD, GUILDFORD.
{Present state.)
for moving had to be procured. These letters would
be sealed by a " good man " {prod homme), assigned in
each hundred, city, or borough, by the justices of the
peace, and special seals were to be expressly made,
said the statute, bearing the king's arms in the centre,
the name of the county around, and that of the hundred,
city, or borough across. Even the case of fabricating
false letters was foreseen, which shows how well was
realized the ardent desire of many men of this class to

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 275
leave the place where they were tied. Every individual
surprised without regular papers would be sent to jail.
Beggars were treated as " servants " who had no
" testimonial letters." ' What was wanted was to impose
immobility upon as many people as possible, and thus
hinder the disquieting peregrinations of so many rovers.
As for beggars incapable of work, they must neverthe
less cease frequenting the highroads, and must end
their days in the cities where they chance to be at the
time of the proclamation, or at most in some town near

ni iitcti rp; xxxqxomc.Mii'fi.i.c.

A CRIPPLE AND OTHER BEGGARS.
{From the MS. lo E. IV.)

the spot where they were born ; they shall be taken there
within forty days, to stay " for the rest of their lives."
What is stranger, and lacking other proofs, would
show to what class students then belonged, is that they
are included in the same category ; they were accustomed,
on returning to their homes, or on making pilgrimages,
or going to the university, to hold out a hand for the
charity of passers-by and to knock at the door of possible
givers. They were ranked with the beggars, and put
in irons if they lacked the regulation letter ; this docu
ment was to be given them by the Chancellor, and that
' 12 Rich. II, Cap. 7.

276 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
was the only difference : " And that the scholars of the
universities that go so begging have letters testimonial
of their Chancellor upon the same pain." '
Again, in the following year (1389), a new statute
reproves the custom of " artificers, labourers, servants,"
etc., who keep for their own use harriers and other dogs,
and on " feast days, when good Christians are at church
hearing Divine service," get into the parks and warrens
of the nobility and destroy the game. Much more,
they avail themselves of these occasions when they meet
together armed, without fear of being disturbed, to " hold
their assemblies, conversations, and conspiracies, to rise
against and disobey their allegience." The thickets of
the seignorial forests must have sheltered many a meeting
of this kind during church services on the eve of the great
revolt of 1 38 1 ; ' in such retreats no doubt were brought
forth some of the living and stirring ideas which, trans
ported from place to place by the wanderers, made the
people of different counties understand that they were
the same people, suffering from a variety of abuses,
longing for relief.
In a revolt like this, the part played by the
wandering class is considerable, and the historian should
not neglect it. If we do not take this element into account,
it is hard to explain the extent and importance of a
movement which came near having consequences com
parable to those of the French Revolution. " I had lost
my heritage and the kingdom of England," said Richard II
' 12 Rich. II, cap. 7. Cf. above, p. 236.
» On which see, e.g. Andre R6ville and Ch. Petit-DutaiUis, " Le soul^-
vement des travailleurs d'Angleterre en 1 381," Paris, 1898 ; G. M. Trevel
yan, " England in the age of Wycliffe," chapters vi and vii ; " The
Peasants' rising and the Lollards, a collection of unpublished documents,"
edited by E. PoweU and G. M. Trevelyan, London 1899, with data not
only on the great rising, but on some later troubles (1392, 1398) of lesser
magnitude, but important as signs ; C. Oman, " The Great Revolt of
1 381," Oxford, 1906.

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 277
on the evening of the day when his presence of mind
had saved him, and he was right. Why was the French
Jacquerie a commonplace, powerless rising compared to
the English revolt ? The reasons are manifold, but
one of the chief was the absence of a class of wayfarers
as strong, active, and numerous as that of England. This
class served to unite all the people : by its means those
of the South learnt the ideas of those of the North, what
each suffered and desired ; the sufferings and wishes
were not always identical, but it was enough to know
that all had reforms to demand. Thus, when the news
came that the revolt had begun, the people rose on all
sides, and while it was apparent that the desires of each
were not absolutely similar, yet the basis of the contention
being the same, and all wishing for more independence,
they went forth together without being otherwise ac
quainted than by the intermediary of the wayfarers. The
kings of England, indeed, had perceived the danger,
and on different occasions had promulgated statutes
bearing especially on the talk indulged in by these
wanderers about the nobles, prelates, judges, and all
the depositaries of public power. Edward I had said
in one of his laws :
" Forasmuch as there have been oftentimes found in
the country devisors of tales, whereby discord, or occasion
of discord, hath many times arisen between the king and
his people, or great men of this realm ; for the damage
that hath and may thereof ensue, it is commanded, that
from henceforth none be so hardy to tell or publ'sh any
false news or tales, whereby discord, or occasion of dis
cord, or slander may grow between the king and his
people, or the great men of the realm ; and he that doth
so, shall be taken and kept in prison, until he hath brought
him into the court who was the first author of the tale." '
The danger of such speeches, which touched the acts
' §tatute 3 Ed. I, stat. i, cap. 34, a.d. 1275.

278 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
and even the thoughts of the great men of the kingdom,
became menacing anew under Richard II, and in the
first years of his reign the following statute was enacted,
reinforcing that of 1275 :
" Item, Of devisors of false news and reporters
of horrible and false lyes, concerning prelates, dukes,
earls, barons, and other nobles and great men of the realm,
and also concerning the chancellor, treasurer, clerk of
the privy seal, steward of the king's house, justices of
the one bench or of the other, and of other great officers
of the realm about things which by the said prelates, lords,
nobles, and officers aforesaid were never spoken, done,
nor thought . . . whereby debates and discords might
arise betwixt the said lords or between the Lords and
the Commons, which God forbid, and whereof great
peril and mischief might come to all the realm, and quick
subversion and destruction of the said realm, if due remedy
be not provided : it is straitly defended upon grievous
pain, for to eschew the said damages and perils, that from
henceforth none be so hardy to devise, speak, or to tell
any false news, lyes, or other such false things, of pre
lates, lords, and of other aforesaid, whereof discord or
any slander might rise within the same realm ; and he
that doth the same shall incur and have the pain another
time ordained thereof by the statute of Westminster the
first." ' In vain : two years later broke out the revolt
of the peasants, and the depositions of the rebels when
brought before the judge leave no doubt as to the part
played by wayfarers in the carrying of political news
from one county to another.
The mason John Cole, of Lose, in the parish of Maid
stone, Kent, turns informer, betrays twenty-seven of his
companions, giving their names (some proved innocent),
and saving his own head. Their plan was to make the
otherwise unpopular John of Gaunt, king of England,
' Statute 2 Rich, II, chap. 5,

OUTLAWS AND PEASANTS OUT OF BOND 279
on the mere report that he had freed his " natives." The
rebels had decided to send to him in order to ascertain,
and if the news proved true, to depose his nephew young
Richard 1 1. The report had been brought to the city
of Canterbury by pilgrims, peregrini, arriving from the
North, obviously to worship at the shrine of St. Thomas.'
In mediaeval France during the endless wars, and
the brief intervals between them, the roads were held by
plundering brigands : labourers or knights by birth.
Soldiers, the dregs of the lowest or highest classes, con
sidered the rest of society as their devoted prey, the high
way resounded with the noise of arms, the peasant fled.
Troops originally equipped for the defence of the land
attacked without scruple all whom they thought less
strong than themselves and worth robbing. Such people
"turned French," as Froissart puts it, and "turned
English " according to the interest of the moment.
The vagrants threatened with the stocks by the English
law were of another kind, and whatever the number of
brigands among them these were not the majority ; the
peasants mostly sympathized with, instead of fearing,
them. Thus the English revolt was not a desperate
enterprise ; it was conducted with extraordinary cool
ness and practical sense. The insurgents showed a calm
' Document published (but only in an EngUsh translation) by W. E.
Flaherty : " Sequel to the great rebellion in Kent, of 1381," " Archseologia
Cantiana," vol. iv. pp. 67 ff. The author interprets peregrini, at one place
by strangers, at another by pilgrims ; the latter is the real meaning.
Some traces of kindness to his tenants, on the part of John of Gaunt
are found in his Registers. He orders wood and charcoal to be carried
to the castle ofTutbury where his wife was to spend the winter, and insists
that the work be done in summer, so that his tenants and bondmen be not
grieved by the carrying thereof in the bad season.. ." Si vouUons et vous
mandons que vous faces faire et carier a nostre dit chastel ccc quarters de
carbons, et aussint vous faces carier tout la boys abatuz par vent que vous
bonement pourrez en nostre dit chastel pur fuaille, et que ce soit fait toute
voies en ceste saison d'estee, issint que noz tenantz et bondes ne soient pas
tariez ne grevez ove la cariage d'ycelle en temps de yver." " John of Gaunt's
Register," ed. S. A. Smith, 191 ij vol, ii, p. 203, year 1373.

28o ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
consciousness of their strength which strikes us, and
struck much more the anxious knights in London ; they
went with their eyes open, and, if they destroyed much,
they wished also to reform. It was possible to treat
and come to an understanding with them ; truth to say,
the word and pledge given them will be broken, and the
prison, the rope and the block will quickly put an end to
the revolt ; but whatever the Lords and Commons sitting
at Westminster may say,' the new bonds will not have
the tenacity of the old ones, and a great step towards
freedom, one with which the continent has nothing com
parable, will have been made.
In France, the beast of burden, ill-nourished, ill-
treated, fretted by the harness, trudged wearily along
with shaking head, wan eye and a halting gait ; his
sudden bolts only caused new loads to be added to his
fardel, and that was all ; centuries were to pass before
the day of accounting came and, in blood too, the account
would be settled.
' And they said it in the most peremptory language, highly approving
of the king's breaking his word and revoking the sweeping manumissions
(" manumisimus universes ligeos et singulos subditos nostros," Walsingham,
ii. 467, Rolls) he had granted out of fear ; the lords and the commons answer :
" a une voice qe cele repele fuist ben faite, adjoustant que tiele manumission
ou franchise des neifs ne poast estre fait sanz lour-assent q'ont le greindre
interesse : a quoy ils n'assenterent unques de lour bone gree, n'autrement,
ne jamais ne ferroient pur vivre et murrir touz en un jour." " RoUs of
Parliament," iU. p. 100 ; year 1381. So they would rather die, all of them
in a day, than assent to a freedom granted " without the assent of those
most interested " : and it never occurred to them that those most interested
could possibly be the viUeirs themselves and not the vjUeins' masters.

PART III
RELIGIOUS WAYFARERS

A FRIAR ON A JOURNEY (cIIAUCER's " FRERE ").
{From the EUesmere MS.)

CHAPTER I
WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS
'\'\7'7HILE the inward consciousness of common
W/ 'wants and longings for better days spread
^ ^ everywhere, by means of that crowd of work
people whom we find in England ceaselessly on the move
in spite of statutes, the guiding ideas were sown broad
cast by another kind of roamer, the preachers. Sprung
also from the people, they had studied ; as we have seen
it was not necessary to be rich in order to go through
the course at Oxford ; the villeins even sent their children
there, and the Commons, of scant liberalism as we know,
protested against this emancipation of another kind, this
advancement by means of learning, " avancement par
clergie." Preventive measures, they thought, were in
dispensable to save " the honour " of the freemen of the
realm, by which they meant privilege ; ideas of honour
have changed. But, even then, it was going too far,
and the king, who had after all learnt a lesson in 138 1,
rebuked the Commons with a " le rei s'avi?era " which
?83

284 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
was then, and is to-day, the form of royal refusal.' These
clerks knew what was the condition of the people ; they
knew the miseries of the poor, which were those of their
father and mother and of themselves ; the intellectual
culture they had received enabled them to transform
into precise conceptions the general aspirations of the
tillers of the soil. The former are not less necessary
than the latter to every important social movement ; if
both are indispensable to the making of the tool, handle
and blade, it is these definite views which form the blade.
The roaming preachers knew how to sharpen it, and
they were numerous. Those whom Wyclif sent to
popularize his doctrineSj^^ his " simple priests," or " poor
priests," did just what others had done before them ;
they imitated their forerunners, and no more confined
themselves to expounding the difficult and not always
democratic theories of their master than the mendicant
friars, or monks, or secular priests, friends of the revolu
tion, strictly kept to the precepts of the gospel. Their
sympathies were with the people, and they showed it in
their discourses. Wyclif contributed to the increase
of these wanderers ; his people came from the same
stock as the others ; if it was easy for him to find clerks
ready to act as his missionaries, the reason was that many
in the kingdom were already prepared for such a task,
and only awaited their opportunity.3 The revolutionary
' " Item priont les communes . . . de ordeiner et commander que
null neif ou vileyn mette ses enfantz de cy en avant a Escoles pur eux avancer
par clergie, et ce en maintenance et salvation de I'honour de toutz Franks
du Roialme." " Rolls of Parliament," vol. iU. p. 294, 15 Rich. II, 1391.
» Beginning at an uncertain date: before the papal schism, i.e. 1378,
according to Shirley, Introduction to "Fasciculi Zizaniorum," 1858,
Rolls series; "several months before the revolt of 1 38 1 broke out,"
according to Oman, " The Great Revolt," 1906, p. 19.
3 Their activity as wandering preachers is well shown by "The tenor of
the complaint made to the Kinge and his counceU against John Fox, Maior
of Northampton, and o'hers exhibited in French by Richard Stermers-
worthe, a wolmin," year 1392-3. According to the deponent the Mayor

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 285
leader John Ball was a secular priest, and so was the well-
known Lollard, William Thorpe.
All, in fact, did the same kind of work. For different
motives and with different aims, they led to the same
results : the belief that the State, the Church, the Govern
ment, the Court, the rule of the masters, whether spiritual
or temporal, were not what they should be, and that a
change must come. Doubts and discontents always help
each other ; whoever strikes at the tree shakes the tree.
Wyclif's theory, " both before and after the rising, was
that temporal lords had a right to their property, but that
churchmen had no right to theirs." ' His teachings
helped, however, to spread doubts as to the legitimacy
of both. Though it had nothing to do with Lollard
tenets, the diffusion thereof was facilitated by the papal
schism of 1378 : another great tree that was shaken.
Men able to address a crowd scoured the country, draw
ing together the poor and attracting them by harangues filled
with what people who suffer always like to hear. The
statute passed just after the revolt clearly shows how much
the influence of the wandering preachers was feared.
Their dress even and manner of speech are described ;
these malcontents have an austere aspect, they go " from
county to county, and from town to town in certain habits
under dissimulation of great holiness." They dispense
of course with the ecclesiastical papers which regular
preachers ought to carry ; they are " without the licence
of our Holy Father the Pope, or of the Ordinaries of the
who welcomes every "errant LoUard," has caused "the whole towne in
manner to become LoUardes. ... All ribands infected with LoUardry, that
come to the said towne are aU courteously received and maintayned as yf
they were prophetts before all others." The day after Christmas, the
Mayor " brought with him ... an errant Lollard to preach within
AU Saints Church." He did the same later, bringing the "parson of the
church of Wynkpole, an errant LoUarde, to preach." Powell and
Trevelyan, "The Peasants' risings and the LoUards," London, 1899,
pp. 45 ff.
I G. M. Trevelyan, " England in the age of WycUffe," 1899, p. 199,

286 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
places, or other sufficient authority." They make them
selves heard, and their successors to this day have never
ceased to follow suit, " not only in churches and church
yards, but also in markets, fairs, and other open places
where a great congregation of people is." Their real
subject is not dogma, but the social question ; on their
lips the religious sermon becomes a political harangue.
" Which persons," the statute says, " do also preach
divers matters of slander, to engender discord and dis
sension betwixt divers estates of the said realm as well
spiritual as temporal, in exciting of the people, to the
great peril of all the realm." They are cited to appear
before the ecclesiastic authority, the ordinaries, but refuse
to " obey to their summons and commandments." Let
the sheriffs and others of the king's officers henceforth
watch with care these wandering orators and send to prison
those unable to show proper certificates.'
We may gain an idea of their speeches by recalling
the celebrated harangue of the priest John Ball,^ the
most stirring of these travelling orators. Certainly, in
the Latin phrase of the " Chronicle of England," his
thoughts are given too solemn and too correct a form,
but all that we know of the circumstances matches so
well his undoubted purports, that his actual speech cannot
have differed, in its trend at least, from what the chronicler
has transmitted to us. The popular saying quoted before
serves as his text, and he developes it in this manner :
" At the beginning we were all created equal ; it is
the tyranny of perverse men which has caused servitude
to arise, in spite of God's law ; if God had willed that
there should be serfs He would have said at the beginning
I Statute 5 Rich. II, 2, cap 5.
s He has often been considered as an adherent of Wyclif, for no reason
save that both, at the same time, wanted radical reforms, not a few how
ever of a different kind. BaU had some reUgious ideas peculiar to himself;
thus, according to him, natural children could not go to heaven.

" WHEN ADAM DELVED AND EVE SPAN." [P- 2&7
{The motto of John Ball's speech illustrated from the MS. 2 B. vii. Fourteenth Century

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 289
of the world who should be serf and who should be
lord." '
What made Ball powerful was that he found his best
weapons in the Bible ; quoting it he appealed to the
good sentiments of the lowly, to their virtue, their reason ;
he showed that the Divine Word accorded with their
interest ; they would be " like the good father of a family
who cultivates his field and plucks up the weeds." The
same ideas are attributed to him by almost all the chroni
clers. Froissart uses to describe his doings almost the
same words as the statute already quoted. He represents
him when he found a congregation of people, especially
on Sundays, after mass, preaching in the open air sermons
similar to that in the " Chronicon Angliae " : " This
preest," says Froissart, " used often tymes on the sondayes
after masse, whanne the people were goynge out of the
mynster, to go into the cloyster and preche, and made
the people to assemble about hym, and wolde say thus :
A ye good people, the maters gothe nat well to passe in
Englande, nor shall nat do tyll every thyng be common,
and that there be no villayns nor gentylmen. . . . What
have we deserved or why shulde we be kept thus in
servage ? we be all come fro one father and one mother,
Adam and Eve : whereby can they say or shewe that
they be gretter lordes than we be, savynge by that they
cause us to wyn and labour for that they dispende . . .
They dwell in fayre houses, and we have the payne and
traveyle, rayne and wynde in the feldes ; and by that
that cometh of our labours they kepe and maynteyne
their estates. . . . Lette us go to the kyng, he is yonge,
and shewn hym what servage we be in. . . . Thus Johan
sayd on sondayes whan the people issued out of the
churches in the vyllages . . . and so they wolde murmure
one with another in the feldes and in the wayes as
' " Chronicon Anglias," 1328-1388, ed. E. Ma,\!ncl§ Thompson, 1874,
Rolls Series, p. 321, 19

290 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
they went togyder, affermyng howe Johan Ball sayd
.^trouthe." '
'^ So the enthusiastic multitude promised to make him
archbishop and chancellor of that kingdom in which he
dreamed there should be " equal liberty, equal rank,
equal power " for all ; but he was taken, drawn, hanged,
beheaded, and quartered/ and his dream remained a dream.
=- Meanwhile, politics apart, there might yet be found
in the fourteenth century seme cf God's elect who,
alarmed by the crimes of the world and the state of sin
in which men lived, left their cells or the paternal roof
to go about among villages and towns and preach con
version. There remained some, but they were rare.
Contrary to others, these did not speak of public affairs,
but of eternal interests ; they had not always received
sacred orders ; they acted as volunteers to the celestial
army. Of this sort was the before mentioned Richard
Rolle, of Hampole, whose life was partly that of a hermit,
partly of a wandering preacher. He was neither monk,
nor doctor, nor priest ; when young, he had abandoned
his father's house to go and lead a contemplative life in
solitude. There he meditated, prayed, and mortified
himself ; crowds came to his cell to listen to his exhor
tations ; he had ecstatic trances ; his friends took off
his ragged cloak, mended it, and put it back on his shoulders
without his perceiving it. He later left his retreat, and
for a long time travelled over the north of England,
becoming a wanderer, " changing place continually,"
preaching to lead men to salvation. He finally settled
at Hampole, where he ended his life in seclusion, writing
incessantly, and edifying the neighbourhood by his devo
tion ; he died the year of the great plague, 1349. Scarcely
was he dead than his tomb attracted pilgrims, pious people
brought offerings there, miracles were performed. In the
' Lord Berners' " Froissart," cap. ccclxxxi.
2 " Chronicon Anglias," 1328-1388, Thompson's edition, 1874, p. 322.

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 291
nuns' convent at Hampole, which drew from the vicinity
of his tomb great honour and profit, an " Office of St.
Richard, the hermit," was composed, as we have seen,
to be sung when he should be canonized. But the office
of the old hermit and itinerant preacher has never had
occasion to be sung down to the present day.'
The wandering preachers met with in the villages
were not always Lollards sent by Wyclif, nor inspired
men who, like Rolle of Hampole, held their mission
from their conscience and from God ; they were often
members of an immense and powerful caste sub-divided
into several orders, that of the mendicant friars. The
two principal branches were the Dominicans, Preachers, or
Black friars, and the Franciscans, Friars minor or Grey
friars, both established in England in the thirteenth cen
tury, ^ the " men of this [world] that most wide walken,"
said Langland. 3
The immortal satires of Chaucer should not blind
us to the initial merit of these orders, nor cause us
to see in the members thereof, at all times, nothing
but impudent and idle vagabonds, at once impious,
superstitious, and greedy —
" A Frere ther was, a wantoun and a merye ;
*****
Ful wel biloved, and famulier was he

' " EngUsh Prose Treatises of Richard RoUe of Hampole," edited
-by Rev. George Perry, 1866, Early EngUsh Text Society, Preface, pp.
ix, xv-xix. See before, p. 141.
" The Dominicans in 1221 ; the Franciscans in 1224. See Dr.
Jessopp, "The Coming of the Friars," .London,^ 1888, pp. 32-34, a work
in which shine the ample knowledge and wide sympathies of the late rector
of East Dereham, the " Arcady for better for worse " where he spent so
many years. When Taine made his last visit to England I wanted, if I
may be permitted to recall a personal souvenir, to give him a lunch where
each of those invited would be a representative Englishman. Robert
Browning represented poetry ; Augustus Jessopp, who deeply impressed
the chief guest, the country clergy.
.3 " Vision," Text C, pas. xi. 1. 14.

292

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
With frankeleyns overal in his cuntre.
And eek with worthi wommen of the toun ;
*****
Ful sweetly herde he confessioun,
.A.nd plesaunt was his absolucioun.
He was an esy man to yeve penance,
Ther as he wiste to han a good pitance ;
For unto a povre ordre for to geve
Is sigiie that a man is wel i-shreve.
*****
He knew wel the tavemes in every toun.
And every ostiller or gay tapstere." '

tiiiiiui^mii f oiijjitrcuiini 91
aitirnt60iiv»tinia;nMritMM!ipjo fuo mltwfoicoiiuvttun
.uitpjctainnn iituittiim av
10 1 itr.io'altu; ! tnin oni 011
in cpna-fTtMtfinf cf^ff.ou-

)i

in2ioufiintiftuib.;v "o invf •¦c"' ''¦
ijttxi C'iCDlunii ic'tftii.pi.iicv)iofii;,
si|feKK.uiyrwnfianxfnr.iUL*.Kic lntif.iHx;r!;ji)fri3iiit).>crcV:rtiIiiyi«
" (n!!i>..noii.ct'C-pjcailcn<"ptititmJ

A WORLDLY ECCLESIASTIC.
[From the MS. lo E. IV.)

In Chaucer's days, such friars were many, but some
better ones could also be met ; not only those, rare indeed
in the fourteenth century, who continued the traditions
of their founder, living among the poor, poor as they,
and withal wise, devout, and compassionate : Chaucer's
friar was of a different sort ; he avoided acquaintance
with " a lazer or a beggere," unwilling to deal " with
such poraile." But even among those who lived careless
of the rule, some were at work whose thoughts, dangerous
' Prologue to " Canterburv Tales,'*

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 293
as they might be, were not so base, those friars namely
who, when the moment came, could be confounded with
the simple priests of their enemy Wyclif, and who were
certainly comprised along with them in the statute of
1382. Certain it is that many friars, in their roaming
career, preached in the market place, just like John Ball,
the new doctrines of emancipadon. Hence they alone
among the clergy, at the hour of the great revolt, still
preserved a certain popularity among the lowly ; and the
monastic chroniclers, their natural enemies, complacently
paraded in their narratives this new grievance against these
detested orders.' Langland, who cursed the revolt, cursed
also the friars for having a share of responsibility in it.
Envy has whispered into their ears and said : study logic,
law, and the hollow dreams of philosophers, and go from
village to village proving that all property ought to be
in common — the very teaching of John Ball :
" and proven hit by Seneca
That alle thyng under hevene ¦ ouhte to beo in comune." ^
Always armed with good sense, Langland plainly
declares that the author of these subversive theories lies ;
the Bible says, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
goods." Formerly the life of the friars was exemplary,
Charity dwelt among them ; this was in the days of
the great saint of Assisi, the friend of men, the friend of
birds, the friend of all that had been created and could
suffer. 3
' Jack Straw, according to the confession which his contemporary the
monk Thomas Walsingham relates of him, would have liked to keep no
other ecclesiastics on earth but the mendicant friars : " Soli mendicantes
vixissent super terram qui suffecissent pro sacris celebrandis aut conferendis
universe terrse." " Historia Anglicana," vol. ii. p. xo. Rolls Series.
2 " Piers Plowman," Skeat's edition. Text C, pass. xxiU. 1. 274.
3 "Ac it is ferre agoo • in seynt Fraunceys tyme."
Text B, pass. xv. 1. 226.

294 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
And, indeed, what a holy mission their founder had
given them 1 Coarsely dressed, barefoot, getting only
such food as was freely offered them, they were to go
into the towns and visit the poorest, most densely popu
lated and unhealthiest suburbs, to seek out the lost.
" And all the brothers," said Francis, in his rule,
" are to be clad in mean habits, and may blessedly mend
them with sacks and other pieces ; whom I admonish
and exhort, that they do not despise or censure such men
as they see clad in curious and gay garments and using
delicate meats and drinks, but rather let every one judge
and despise himself." They must never quarrel, but be
" meek, peacable, modest, mild and humble. . . . And
they are not to ride unless some manifest necessity or
infirmity oblige them. Whatsoever house they go into,
they shall first say, ' Peace be unto this house,' and, accord
ing to the Gospel, it shall be lawful for them to eat of all
meats that are set before them." They must beg in
order to get the necessaries of life, but they must receive
them in kind, never in money. " The brothers shall not
make anything their own, neither house nor place, nor
any other thing ; and they shall go confidently to beg
alms like pilgrims and strangers in this world, serving
our Lord in poverty and humility." '
All the miseries, all the hideous blemishes of humanity,
every kind of outcasts, the physical or moral lepers, were
to have their sympathy ; and the lower classes in return
would love and venerate them, and grow morally better,
owing to their word and example. Eccleston relates that a
friar minor once put on his sandals without permission to
go to matins. He dreamt afterwards that he was arrested
by robbers, who cried out, " Kill him 1 Kill him ! "
" But I am a friar minor," said he, sure of being
respected. ' " The Rule and Life of the Friars Minors," in Dugdale's " Monas
ticon AngUcanum," London, 1817, vol. vi. p. 1504.

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 295
" Thou liest, for thou art not barefoot." '
The first of their duties was to remain poor, in order
to be able, having nothing to lose, fearlessly to use firm
language to the rich and powerful of the world. When
on his death-bed, in 1253, wise and courageous Robert
Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, a great friend of theirs,
and because a friend of theirs, reminded them of their
rule, appropriately quoting a line of Juvenal's .
" Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator."
The friars were to be like the traveller without money,
whose peace of mind is never disturbed by meeting
robbers. 2
St. Francis had not wished his friars to be men of
learning and study ; he was afraid especially of those
subtle theological and metaphysical researches which use
lessly absorbed the life of so many great clerics. Others
enough, he thought, would devote themselves to such
speculations ; he wanted to fill a gap and in this line
there was no gap. His rule was so strict that the famous
Roger Bacon, who belonged to his order, had to apply
to the pope to be permitted to use ink and parchment. 3
What the saint desired was to send throughout the world
an army of missionaries who would devote themselves
materially and morally to the welfare, body and soul, of
all the weary, the derelict, the dregs of humanity. Thus
practised, with no room left for the pride of knowledge,
disinterestedness was the more absolute, servitude the
' " Liber de adventu Minorum in Angliam," in " Monumenta Fran-
ciscana," ed. Brewer, Rolls Series, 1858, p. 28. The author, Thomas
of Eccleston, himself a Franciscan, saw the most flourishing period of the
mendicant orders ; his book, of extreme na'ivet^, abounds in visions and tales
of wonders. ~ Matthew Paris, " Historia Anglorum," London, 1866, vol. iii. p.
145, Rolls Series.
3 " Monumenta Franciscana," RoUs, p. xxix.

296 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
more voluntary, and the effect on the masses the greater.
The subtlety of teachers was not necessary for the ful
filling of this task ; and the striking example of the
poverty of the consoler, heedless of his own troubles, was the
best of consolations. Above all, the vanity of the apostle
must be killed, the greatness of his merit must be apparent
to God only. With a heart so purified he would neces
sarily have a sufficient comprehension of the problems
of life and of the high moral aims accessible even to
the lowest to be naturally eloquent ; the study of the
" Summae," in repute, was useless.
But too many dangers surrounded the sublime founda
tion, and the first was knowledge itself " The Emperor
Charles, Roland and Oliver," once said the Saint, " and
all the paladins and all strong men, have pursued the
infidel in battle till death, and with great pains and
labour have won their memorable victories. The holy
martyrs died struggling for the faith of Christ. But in
our days there are people who seek glory and honour
among men simply by the narration of the deeds of heroes.
In like manner there are some among you who take more
pleasure in writing and preaching on the merits of the
saints than in imitating their works." This reply St.
Francis made to a novice who wished to have a psalter.
He humorously added, " When you have a psalter you
will wish to have a breviary, and when you have a breviary
you will sit in a chair like a great prelate, and will say to
your brother, ' Brother, fetch me my breviary.' " '
The popularity of the friars had soon become immense,^
' " Speculum Vitae B. Francisi et sociorum ejus, opera fratris Guil.
Spoelberch," Antwerp, 1620, part i. cap. 4.
2 Thirty-two years after the friars had appeared in England, they
already possessed forty-nine convents (" Monumenta Franciscana," ed.
Brewer, 1858, p. iq). In Matthew Paris wiU be found a good description
of the behaviour of the friars minor in England on their arrival, of the poor,
humble, and useful life that they first led. " Historia Anglorum," ed.
Madden, 1866, vol. ii. p. 109.

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 297
and it was found that they had monopolized in England
everything that concerned religion.' By a quite human
contradiction — let Brutus be Caesar — their poverty had
invited riches, and their self-denial power ; the hovels
where they lodged at first had become sumptuous monas
teries with chapels as large as cathedrals ; the rich wanted
to be buried there, in tombs chiselled with the latest refine
ments of the florid Gothic. Their apologists of the
fifteenth century relate with admiration that in their fine
library at London, for in spite of the rule they had a fine
library, there was a tomb adorned with four cherubims ; ^
that their church, begun in 1306, was three hundred
feet long, ninety-five wide, and sixty-four feet high, with
the columns all of marble as well as the pavement. Kings
and princes had enriched the building ; some had given
the altars, others the stalls ; Edward III, " for the repose
of the soul of the most illustrious Queen Isabella, buried
in the choir " (who had ended her immoral life in the
habit of the Santa Clara nuns), repaired the great middle
window, blown down by the wind. In the same church
was preserved the heart of Queen Eleanor, mother of
Edward I. Relating that it was there, Rishanger, a
monk of Saint Albans and a contemporary, made there
upon a remark, which Walsingham, also a monk
of St. Albans, gleefully reproduced in his " Historia
Anglicana": "Her body was buried in the monastery
of Ambresbury, but her heart in London, in the church
of the Minorites, who, like all friars of every order, claim
for themselves something of the bodies of any powerful
persons dying ; after the manner of the dogs assembling
' See " Defensionem curatorum contra eos qui privilegiatos se
dicunt" (410, undated), a speech made in 1357, by Richard Fitz- Ralph,
Archbishop of Armagh, in which are denounced the successive encroachments
of the mendicant friars to the detriment of the secular clergy.
2 " Monumenta Franciscana," ut supra, pp. 514, etc. This library
had been founded by the celebrated Richard Whittington, who was Mayor
of London in 1397-98, 1406-07, and 1419-20.

298 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
round corpses, where each one greedily awaits his portion
to devour." ' Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, had
given for the same building twenty trees from his forest
of Tunbridge. Rich merchants, the mayor, the aldermen,
followed suit. The names of the donors were inscribed
on the windows, and Langland was indignant, and recalled
the precept, " Let not thy left hand know what thy right
hand doeth." We learn thus that the third window on
the west had been given by Walter Mordon, " stoke-
fyschmonger," and Mayor of London. The second
window on the south was due to John of Charlton, knight,
and his wife, whose arms figured in it ; the fourth to
Walter de Gorst, fellmonger of London ; the fifth to the
Earl of Lancaster ; the fourth on the west to " various
collections, and thus it does not bear a name." One of
the donors is styled the special father and friend of the
friars minor.
It could be but a delight for the Wyclifites to reproach
the friars with all these mundane splendours ; Wyclif
revels in it :
" Freris bylden mony grete chirchis and costily waste
housis, and cloystris as hit were castels, and that with
oute nede. . . . Grete housis make not men holy, and
onely by holynesse is God wel served." Those convents
are " Caymes Castelis."^
Interminable lists, too, of cardinals, bishops, and
kings who have belonged to the order are drawn up, not
forgetting even " certain persons of importance in the
world,' — the very antithesis of their founder's intent.
Finally, they enumerate the dead who at the last moment
assumed the habit of the friars : " Brother Sir Roger
' " More canum cadaveribus assistentium, ubi quisque suam parti-
culam avide consumendam expectat." Rolls Series, vol. i. 38 ; sub anno
1291-92. '- Wyclif's " Select English Works," ed. Thos. Arnold, 1869, vol. iU.
pp. 348, 380.

PSALM SINGING. THE INTERIOR OF A FRIAR's CHURCH, IP- 293.
{From the MS, Domit. A. xvii. in the British Museum.)

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 301
Bourne, knight, buried at Norwich in the friars' habit,
1334-"^ The pride and riches of the Dominicans are just as
great. The author of "Pierce the Ploughman's Crede,"
towards the end of the fourteenth century, accurately
describes one of their monasteries, the splendid columns
to be seen there, the sculptures, paintings, and gildings
that adorn the chapter house, so beautiful that it obviously
reminds the author of the one at Westminster, or of the
painted chamber, " la chambre peinte," where at times
Parliament sat :
" As a Parlement-hous • y-peynted aboute,"
the magnificent stained g'ass windows ornamented with
the arms of the nobles or the mark of the merchants who
have given them (" merkes of marchauntes "), and " lovely
ladies," their bronze figures lying on the slabs, " in many
gay garmentes," the imposing tombs of knights heightened
with gold.^
The proportions are reversed ; as great as the modesty
required by the holy founder was now the pride. The
faults Chaucer reproaches them with creep in among them ;
they become interested, greedy, coarse men of the world.
The necessity for them to live among the laity had been
one of their chief dangers ; they were to save the laity,
but were instead corrupted by it ; they caught the plague
that they were to cure. Before even the middle of the
' " Monumenta Franciscana," p. 541. Hence the reproaches of
the satirists :
" Of these frer mynours me thenkes moch wonder,
JThat waxen are thus hauteyn, that som tyme weren under."
Thomas Wright's " PoUtical Poems and Songs," 1859, vol. i. p. 268,
Rolls Series.
2 "Pierce the Ploughman's Crede," ed. Skeat, 1867, Early EngUsh
Text Society, pp. 7—9; written about 1394; author unknown, the same
possibly who composed " The Plowman's Tale," e.g. in Wright's " PoUtical
Poems," both works strongly influenced by Langland's " Visions,"

302 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
thirteenth century, one of them had had a revelation that
" Demons celebrated every year a council against the order,
and had found three means (to pervert it), that is, inter
course with women, the receiving of useless persons, and
the handling of money." '
Mendicity is now their trade, which some practice
well, others better ; miracles of self-denial were demanded
of them, and behold, on the contrary, prodigies of selfish
ness. It is no longer religion, it is their order wh ch
must be promoted ; they preach not on behalf of Christ,
but on behalf of their convent ; the reversal is complete.
All borrow largely from the treasure of good works
amassed by their first apostles and spend it madly. The
respect of the multitude lessens, their renown for holiness
declines ; they cast into the other scale of the balance so
many faults and disorders that it overweighs. And what
remains henceforth ? Superstition replaces devotion ;
some, in spite of the rule, have studied metaphysics and
sciences, the trivium, the quadrivium ^ ; for a larger number,
however, it is not learning but a gross materialism that
veils the superhuman ideal of Francis of Assisi. Contact
with their habit is equivalent to a good deed ; if the dress
is asiumed on the death-bed the demons will take flight.
Numberless visions have revealed to them these articles
of a new faith : " Thei techen lordis and namely ladies,"
says Wyclif, " that if they dyen in Fraunceys habite, thei
schul nevere cum in helle for vertu thereof." 3
' " Liber de adventu Minorum," in " Monumenta Franciscana," p. 52.
^ Grammar, logic, rhetoric — Arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy.
3 " Select English Works," vol. Ui. p. 382. A satire of the fourteenth
century states in the same way :
" Isti fratres predicant per villas et forum
Quod si mortem gustet quis in habitu minorum
, Non intrabit postea locum tormentorum,
Sed statim perducitur ad regna ccelorum."
But if burial is requested for a pauper in one of their privileged churches,
" the keeper is absent," is the answer, and admittance is refused :

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 303
And so it came to pass that, not only poets like
Chaucer and Langland, not only reformers like Wyclif,
but also the universities ' and the monks of the old-
established orders, waged open war against the friars.
To which the monks were moved partly, it is true, by
jealousy, when they saw these newly created brotherhoods,
rising in importance, in numbers and in wealth, but partly,
also, by the sight of undeniable abuses and worldliness.
In such an authoritative work as the " English History,"
written in St. Albans Abbey by Chaucer's contemporary,
Thomas Walsingham, the present state and behaviour of
the friars is thus described : " The friars, unmindful of
their profession, have even forgotten to what end their
orders were instituted ; for the holy men their law-givers
desired them to bs poor and free of all kind of temporal
possessions, that they should not have anything which
they might fear to lose on account of saying the truth.
But now they are envious of possessors, approve the
crimes of the great, induce the commonalty into error,
and praise the sins of both ; and with the intent of acquir
ing possessions, they who had renounced possessions,
with the intent of gathering money, they who had sworn
to persevere in poverty, call good evil and evil good,
leading astray princes by adulation, the people by lies,
and drawing both with themselves out of the straight
" Gardianus absens est, statim respondetur
Et sic satis breviter pauper excludetur."
Wright's " Political Poems," Rolls Series, vol. i. pp. 256-57.
' The complaints of the University of Oxford against the friars, stating
how they wrongfully attracted with fruit and drink mere children, and
taught them how to beg and to ingratiate themselves with the great, were
among the severest : " Nam pomis et potu, ut populus fabulatur, puerulos
ad religionem attrahunt et instigant, quos professes non instruunt sicut
exigit atas ilia, sed mendicationis discursibus permittunt intendere ; atque
tempus, quo possint addiscere, captandis favoribus amicorum, dominarum
et domUnorum, sinunt consumere, in offensam parentium, puerorum pericu
lum et ordinis detrimentum." Year 1358, " Munimenta Academica,"
Rolls Series, i. p. 207.

304

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

path." Walsingham adds that a familiar proverb in his
time was, " He is a friar, therefore a liar." '
The sanctity of the institution and the unworthiness
of many of its members caused it to be at once venerated
and detested ; however contemptible be the man, what
if, after all, the keys of heaven were in his hand ? Respect
mingled with fear in the feeling for him. Thus poets
laughed at the friars, popular story-tellers scouted them ;
distrust, doubt, contempt spread, extending from the
lowly friar to the reverend bishop himself ; churchmen

Mtiatattntftimil iniuiicK

ict.trictcmuin. ^OjnfuiaHvrcni

SPRINKLING DINERS WITH HOLY WATER.
{From the MS. lo E. IV.)
were caricatured on the very stalls upon which they sat ;
Master Reynard was represented delivering a sermon
while wearing episcopal insignia, and neither the minia
turist, charged with illuminating an imposing volume of
Decretals, nor those who had entrusted him with the
work, found anything improper in his satirising on the
margin the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy, from bishops to
monks or clerks. One of the latter is shown forgetting
in the kitchen his sprinkler and bucket of holy water ;
I "Hie est frater, ergo mendax," "Historia AngUcana," 1867-69,
vol. U. p. 13, Rolls Series,

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 305
then remembering what he has come for and going to
sprinkle the masters at table, then returning to the kitchen
maid.' In the same ironical spirit the author of a popular
song of the fourteenth century wrote :
" Preste ne monke ne yit chanoun,
Ne no man of religioun,
Gyfen hem so to devocioun
As done thes holy frers.
For summe gyven ham to chyvalry,
Somme to riote and ribaudery ;
Bot ffrers gyven ham to grete study.
And to grete prayers."
Several stanzas follow which cannot be quoted.^
The people, therefore, fitfully saw in the friars their
protectors and allies in case of revolt, while at other times
they pursued them in the streets with stones, struck them
and lacerated their garments : angels or else devils ?
they were not sure. " At the same time the preaching
friars took to flight because they feared to be maltreated
and ruined, because the commonalty bore with them very
reluctantly, on account of their proud behaviour, for they
did not behave as friars ought." 3
" Know ye," says the king, " that we have understood,
that some persons of our kingdom of England, by the
instigation of the evil spirit, ... do and daily strive to
do harm and scandal to our beloved in Christ, the religious
men, friars of the order of minors, . . . openly and secretly
stirring up our people against them to destroy the houses
of the said friars, tearing their habits from them, striking
some, and ill-treating them, against our peace." 4
From another point of view, that of public safety, the
I Brit. Mus. MS. Roy. lo E. IV, fol. loo, ff. See also in MS. 17
C. XV. in the British Museum a satirical picture of a "ffryer."
2 Wright's " PoUtical Poems," vol. i. p. 263.
3 20 Ed. IL, " Croniques de London," ed. Aungier, Camden Society,
P- 54- 4 Proclamation of Richard II, year 1385; Rymer's "Foedera," ed.
1704, vol. vii. p. 458. 20

3o6 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Commons were indignant at the number of foreigners
among the friars, whom they considered a permanent
danger to the State. They requested " that all the alien
friars, of whatever habit they might be, should void the
realm before the Feast of St. Michael, and if they remained
beyond the said feast they should be held as out of the
common law," that is, outlawed.'
The friars kept their assurance, they were blessed in
the days of their good deeds ; now they speak loud
and make themselves feared ; to the Pope alone they are
amenable ; they carry their heads high, their power is
independent, they have become a church within the Church.
Along with the priest who preaches and confesses in his
parish is to be seen the wandering friar, who preaches
and confesses everywhere ; his universal presence and
power are sources of conflict ; the parish priest finds
himself abaadoned ; the religious wayfarer brings the
unknown, the extraordinary, and everybody runs to him.
He lays down his staff and wallet and begins to talk ;
his language is that of the people, the whole parish is
present ; he busies himself with their eternal welfare,
and also with their earthly interests, for lay life is familiar
to him, and he can give appropriate advice. But his
teaching is sometimes suspicious. " These false prophets,"
says not Wyclif, but the Council of Saltzburg in 1386,
" by their sermons full of fables often lead astray the
souls of their hearers " ; they make game of the authority
of the parish priests.^
To stop their progress proved impossible. The tide
rose and swept away the embankments ; the excellent
had become the worst, corruptio optimi pessima, and the
old adage was verified to the letter. In spite of grievances,
protests, derisive songs and stories, they were met every
where, in the hut and in the castle, begging from the rich
' "RoUs of Parliament," 20 E. Ill, vol. ii. p. 162, a.d. 1346.
2 Labbe, " Sacrosancta ConciUa," Florence, vol. xxvi. col. 729.

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 307
and knocking also at the door of the poor. They sat
at the board of the noble, who treated them with con
sideration ; with him they played the part of the fashion
able man of religion ; they interested, they pleased.
Wyclif shows them creeping into familiarity with the
great, liking " to speke bifore lordis and sitte at tho mete
with hom, . . . al§o to be confessoures of lordis and
ladyes." ' Langland, in " Piers Plowman," is equally
severe on " frere Flaterere." In a Wyclifite treatise of
the same period we read, " Thei geten hem worldly offis
in lordis courtis, and summe to ben conseilours and reuleris
of werris, and also to ben chamberleyns to lordes and
ladies." -
Courting popularity among all people, they were
different men and acted differently in the villages where
they made their rounds ; to their wallet they added store
of thread, needles, ointments, with which they traded :
" Thei becomen pedleris, berynge knyves, pursis,
pynnys and girdlis and spices and sylk and precious pellure
and forrouris for wymmen, and therto smale gentil hondis
(dogs), to gete love of hem." 3
They were more and more the subject of song and
cause of mir h, but they did not mind, being the better
advertised thereby :
" Thai wandren here and there.
And dele with dyvers marcerye.
Right as thai pedlers were.
Thai dele with purses, pynnes, and knyves.
With gyrdles, gloves, for whenches and wyves." 4

1 " Select English Works," vol. iU. p. 396. ^
a " The 'English Works of Wyclif, hitherto unprinted," edited by
F. D. Matthew, Early English Text 'Society, 1880, p. 13. Most of the
pieces in this coUection are only attributed to Wyclif, this one among them.
See also Gower's "Vox Clamantis," Roxburghe Club, 1850, p. 228.
3 " English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted," p. 12.
4 So also in Chaucer's " Prologue " :
" His typet was ay farsud ful of knyfes
And pynnes, for to yive faire wyfes."

3o8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
The anonymous author, a contemporary of Chaucer,
adds :
" I was a frere ful many a day,
Therefor the sothe I wate (know).
But when I sawe that thair lyvyng
Acordyd not to thair preching.
Of I cast my frer clothing.
And wyghtly went my gate " (my v/ay).'
Between the scepticism of the century and blind
credulity, superstition flourished. The friars pretended
they could sell the merits of their order at retail. They
were so numerous and prayed so devoutly, that they had
a surplus of piyers in store. Why not distribute this
superfluous wealth to men of faith and good will ? They
did so, for cash of course ; it. was an exchange of wealth ;
like will to like. The friars went about the country dis
counting these invisible riches, and selling to pious souls,
under the name of letters of fraternity, drafts upon heaven.
What is the use of these parchments } they were asked.
They give a share in the merits of the whole order of St.
Francis. — What are they good for 1 Wyclif was asked.
" Bi siche resouns thinken many men tha!: thes lettris
mai do good for to covere mostard potts." ^
Discredited as they were at the end of the century,
the friars had not, however, lost all hold over the people.
Henry IV usurped the throne, and soon found that he
must reckon with the friars. A good many among them
were indignant at his enterprise, and some preached here
and there, during the first years of his reign, that Richard II
was still living and was the true king, and this was one
more case, and a very important one, of political ideas
vulgarised by wayfarers throughout the country. Henry IV
sent them to gaol. One who was brought before him
' Wright's " PoUtical Poems and Songs," 1859, vol. i. pp. 264 and 268.
2 " Select English Works," vol. i. p. 381. See also Wright's " PoUtical
Poems and Songs," 1859, vol. i. p. 257.

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 309
reproached him violently for the deposition of Richard :
" But I have not usurpea the crown, I have been elected,"
said the king. — "The election is null if the legitimate
king is living ; if he is dead he is dead by thy means ;
if he was killed by thee, thou canst have any title to the
throne." — " By my head," cried the prince, " I will have
thine cut off ! "
The accused were advised to throw themselves on the
king's mercy ; they refused, and requested to be regu
larly tried by a jury. Neither in the city nor in Holborn
could any one be found to sit on that jury ; inhabitants
of Highgate and Islington had to be fetched for the pur
pose. These men declared the friars guilty ; the poor
wretches were drawn to Tyburn, hanged, then beheaded,
and their heads were placed on London Bridge (1402).
The convent was permitted to gather their remains, and
bury them in holy ground. The Islington and High-
gate jurors came weeping to the Franciscans to implore
their pardon for a verdict of which they repented.
For several years, in spite of these punishments, friars
continued to preach about the country in favour of
Richard II, maintaining that he still lived, although
Henry IV had taken care to have a public exhibition in
London of the corpse of his assassinated predecessor.'
In the fifteenth century the reputation of the friars
only grew worse. The abuses of which they were the
living personification were among those which best served
' " Eulogium historiarum," ed. Haydon, RoUs Series, London, 1858,
vol. iii. p. 392. What the condemned friars were accused of was thus
explained to them : " Similiter vos in hypocrisi, adulatione et falsa vita
audivistis falsas confessiones in quibus injunxistis populo pro pcenitentia
ut quaererent regem Ricardum in Wallia. Vos etiam in hypocrisi, adula
tione et falsa vita coUegistis magnam summampecunis mendicando et misistis
ad Audeonum (Owen) Glendour proditorem, ut veniat et destruat totam
linguam Anglicanam," a language which Henry prided himself in speaking
and which he had used in parliament to claim the crown. " Rolls of Parlia-
Hient," iU. 422,

310 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
to draw later adherents to Luther. If there remained in
their ranks men who knew how to die, like that unfortunate
friar Forest, who was hung alive by chains above a wood
fire and slowly roasted, while Bishop Latimer, himself to
be burnt later, addressed the dying man " with pious
exhortations " to repentance,' the mass of them remained
the object of universal contempt. This was one of the
few points on which it sometimes happened that Catholics
and Protestants agreed. Sir Thomas More, beheaded
for the Catholic faith, spoke of the friars in the same strain
as his adversary Tyndal, strangled for the Protestant
faith. In his eyes they were but dangerous vagabonds.
He relates, in his " Utopia," the dispute between a friar
and a fool, on the question of pauperism. " ' You will
never,' said the friar, ' get rid of beggars, unless you also
make an edict against us friars.' ' Well,' said the fool,
' it is already made, the cardinal passed a very good law
against you when he decreed that all vagabonds should
be seized and made to work, for you are the greatest
vagabonds that can be.' When this was said, and all
eyes being turned on the cardinal, they saw he did not
disown it ; every one, not unwillingly, began to smile,
except the friar." ^
A class, as historians have observed, which no longer
justifies its privileges by its services, is in imminent danger ;
if it reforms in time, it may be savea ; if it does not, it
is doomed. In England, the friars were doomed. But
nothing is ever entirely lost, and while, for centuries,
Chaucer's merriment made people merry at the expense
of the begging orders, it is only fair, before parting with
them, to recall such an unprejudiced testimony as that of
' Year 1533, Holinshed, " Chronicles," London, 1587, vol. iU. p. 945.
Friar Forest had refused the oath of supremacy.
2 " LibeUus vere aureus . . . de optimo reipubUcas statu deque noua
Insula _ Vtopia . . . cura P. yEgidU . . . nunc primum , , . editus,"
Louvain, 15 16, lib. i,

WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS 311
Bacon, in his essay "Of Love": "There is in man's
nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of
others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few,
doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh
men become humane and charitable ; as it is seen some
time in friars."

.\ GAME OF FOX AND GEESE.
IfFrom the MS. lo E. IV.)

I

CHAPTER II
THE PARDONERS
NDULGENCE " was at first simply a commu
tation of penance. The punishments inflicted for
sins were of long duration ; fasting and morti
fication had to be carried on for months and years. The
faithful were permitted to transform these interminable
chastisements into shorter expiation. Thus a clerk might
exchange a year of penance against three hundred lashes,
reciting a psalm at each hundred.' Tables of such
exchanges were drawn up by competent prelates. The
learned and autocratic Theodore, born at Tarsus, Cilicia,
an encyclopaedic mind and a strong disciplinarian, arch
bishop of Canterbury from 669 to 690, who left on the
British church a permanent mark, had published a tariff
allowing people to be excused of a month's penance on
bread and water if they sang instead twelve hundred
psalms with bended knees ; for a year's penance the
singing was increased, and each course of psalter singing
was accompanied with three hundred strokes in the palm
of the hand {palmate). But it was possible to compensate
' Hardy, " Registrum palatinum Dunelmense," vol. iii. p. cxxxiv,

THE PARDONERS 313
a year's penance and escape at the same time the psalms,
fasts and strokes by paying a hundred shillings in
alms.' In another such table, drawn up in the ninth
century by Halitgarius, bishop of Cambrai, is found
this additional facility, that if the sinner, sentenced to
a month's penance on bread and water, chooses rather
the singing of psalms he may be allowed not to kneel
while he sings, but then instead of twelve hundred he
will have to sing fifteen hundred and eighty psalms.
He may in the same manner be excused of more than
one month, up to twelve, in which last case, if he chooses
not to kneel, he will have to sing no less than twenty
thousand one hundred and sixty psalms.'
Laymen, who had their choice, frequently preferred
a payment in money, the rich having to pay more than
the poor, and the sums thus obtained were usually well
employed. We have seen them serve for the support
of roads and bridges ; they were also applied in re
constructing churches, in helping the sick of a hospital,
and in covering the expenses of numerous public enter
prises. The entirety of punishments was taken off by
a plenary indulgence ; thus the French pope, Urban II,
at the Council of Clermont, in 1095, granted one to all
those who, through pure devotion and not to acquire
booty or glory, should go to Jerusalem to fight the
infidel ; and this was the first crusade.
Little by little the idea of an actual commutation
vanished, and was replaced by a different system, known
as the theory of the " Treasury." It had indeed become
obvious as the use of indulgences spread, and they were
more and more easily gained, that they could no longer
be justified as offering to the sinner only his choice between
' " Theodori archiepiscopi Cantuariensis poenitentiale," in Migne's
" Patrologia," vol. xcix. col. 938 and 940.
2 " Halitgarii episcopi Cameracensis liber poenitentialis," in Migne's
" Patrologia," ypl. cv, col. 706,

314 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
several sorts of even penances. They were something else.
A short, well selected prayer, a small gift in money,
would now exempt devout people from the greatest
penalties and from numberless years of a possible purga->
tory ; the one could scarcely be considered as the equi
valent of the other ; how was the equilibrium established
between the two scales ? The answer was that the
deficiency was made up by the application to the sinner
of merits, not indeed his own, but of Christ, the Virgin,
and the saints, of which there was an inexhaustible
" treasury," the dispensation of which rested with the
Pope and the clergy.
This theory was acted upon long before . being put
forth in express words ; it does not appear to have been
more than vaguely alluded to before the fourteenth cen
tury, when Pope Clement VI, the " Doctor Doctorum,"
gave a perfectly clear definition and exposition of the
"treasury" system. In a bull of the year 1350, he.
explains that the merits of Christ are infinite, and those
of the Virgin and the saints, superabundant. This excess
of unemployed merit has; been constituted into a treasury,
" not one that is deposited in a strong room, or concealed
in a field, but which is to be usefully distributed to the
faithful, through the blessed Peter, keeper of heaven's
gate, and his successors." However largely employed,
there ought to be " no fear of an absorption or a diminution
of this treasury, first on account of the infinite merits of
Christ, as has been said before, then because the more
numerous are the people reclaimed through the use of
its contents, the more it is augmented by the addition
of their merits." ' The treasury had therefore no chance
of ever being found empty, since the more was drawn
from it the more it grew. Such is in all its simplicity
the theory of the " treasury," which has ever since been
maintained, with no change in the theory but much in
the practice. ' See Appendix XIII, p. 438.

THE PARDONERS 315
With so much to distribute among the faithful, the
Church had recourse, for insuring its repartition, to certain
people who went about, supplied with official letters,
and who offered to good Christians a particle of the
heavenly wealth placed at the disposal of the successors
of Peter. They expected in return some portion of the
earthly riches their hearers might be possessed of, and
which could be applied to more tangible uses than the
" treasury." The men entrusted with this mission were
called sometimes questors, on account of what they asked,
and sometimes pardoners, on account of what they gave.'
Many a man lives in our remembrance owing to his
portrait. If his image had not been preserved by an
artist of genius his memory would have been abolished.
Who would remember, but for her tomb at Lucca, lovely
Ilaria del Carretto } Many among us would not suspect
that the long vanished pardoner ever existed if the master-
painter, Chaucer, had not drawn, from life, his unlovely
portrait. " Lordyngs," says the one in the " Canterbury
Tales ": " Lordyngs, quod he, in chirches whan I preche,
I peyne me to have an hauteyn speche.
And ryng it out, as lowd as doth a belle.
For I can al by rote which that I telle.
My teeme is alway oon, and ever was ;
Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas"
In the pulpit he leans to the right, to the left, he
gesticulates, wanders in his talk ; his arms move as much
as his tongue ; it is a wonder to see and hear him :
" I stonde lik a clerk in my pulpit,
And whan the lewed people is doun i-set,
I preche so as ye have herd before.
And telle hem an hondred japes m^ore.

' The two words were used as interchangeable. Du Cange quotes
a text of 1 3 89, reading : " Come il fust venu en la ville de Necie pres
Faloise un questeur ou porteur de pardons." Sub verto " Perdonantia,"

3i6 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Than peyne I me to strecche forth my necke
And est and west upon the people I bekke.
As doth a dowfe (pigeon), syttyng on a berfae ;
Myn hondes and my tonge goon so yeme.
That it is joye to se my businesse.

I preche no thyng but of coveityse.
Therefor my teem is yit, and ever was.
Radix omnium malorum est cupiditasT
The description may seem to-day improbable and
exaggerated, but it is not. A verifying from authentic
sources and a search for documents only shows once
more Chaucer's marvellous exactness ; not a trait in his
picture that may not be justified by letters from papal
or episcopal chanceries.
These qu^estores, or quastiarii, as they were officially
called, were, says Boniface IX, speaking at the very
time that the poet wrote his tales, sometimes secular
clerics and sometimes friars, most of them extremely
impudent. They dispensed with ecclesiastic licences,
and went from place to place delivering speeches, showing
their relics and selling their pardons. It was a lucrative
trade and the competition was great ; the success of
authorized pardoners had caused a crowd of self-appointed
ones to issue from the school or the priory, or from
mere nothingness, greedy, with glittering eyes, as in the
" Canterbury Tales " : " suche glaryng eyghen hadde he
as an hare " ; true vagabonds, infesters of the high
roads, who having, as they thought, nothing to fear,
boldly carried on their impostor's traffic. They over
awed their listeners, spoke loud, and unbound upon
earth without scruple all that might be bound in heaven.
Much profit arose therefrom ; Chaucer's pardoner got
a hundred marks a year, which Was easy enough for him,
since, having received no authority from any one, to no
one did he render any accounts^ but kept all the gains for

THE PARDONERS 317
himself. In his measured language the Pope tells us as
much as the poet, and it seems as though he would dupli
cate, line by line, the portrait drawn by the story-teller,
his contemporary.
First, says the pontifical letter, these pardoners swear
that they were sent by the Court of Rome. " Certain
religious, who even belong to one or the other of the
mendicant orders, and some secular clerks, even endowed
with privileged benefices, affirm that they are sent by us
or by the legates or the nuncios of the apostolic see, and
that they have received a mission to treat of certain
affairs, ... to receive money for us and the Roman
Church, and they go about the country under these
pretexts." From Rome also comes Chaucer's personage ; he
moves about the country, and in exchange for his pardons
tirelessly asks for goods and money, which certainly will
not go to Rome : " a gentil pardoner . . .
That streyt was comen from the court of Rome .
His walet lay byfom him in his lappe,
Bret-ful of pardoun come from Rome al hoot."

" What ! trowe ye, whiles that I may preche
And Wynne gold and silver for I teche.
That I wil lyve in povert wilfully ?

For I wol preche and begge in sondry londes,
I wil not do no labour with myn hondes . . .
I wol noon of thapostles counterfete,
I wol have money, wolle, chese, and whete."
" Thus," continues the Pope, " they proclaim to the
faithful and simple people (" the lewed people," says
Chaucer's man) the real or pretended authorizations
which they have received ; and irreverently abusing
those which are real, in pursuit of infamous and hateful

3i8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
gain, they carry further their impudence by mendaciously
attributing to themselves false and pretended authori
zations of this kind."
What does the poet say ? That the charlatan has
ever fine things to show, that he knows how to dazzle
the simple, that he has his bag full of parchments with
awe-inspiring seals, maybe genuine, maybe not ; ' that
the people look on and admire, and the parson gets angry
but holds his tongue :
" First I pronounce whennes that I come.
And thanne my bulles schewe I alle and some ;
Oure liege lordes seal upon my patent
That schewe I first, my body to warent,
That no man be so hardy, prest ne clerk.
Me to destourbe of Cristes holy werk.
And after that than tel I forth my tales.
Bulles of popes and of cardynales.
Of patriarkes, and of bisshops, I schewe.
And in Latyn speke I wordes fewe
To savore with my predicacioun.
And for to stere men to devocioun."
As for that " turpem et infamem quaestum " branded
by the Pontiff, it is the ever-recurring burden of the
unholy discourse :
" Now good men, God foryeve yow your trespas.
And ware yow fro the synne of avarice.
Myn holy pardoun may you alle warice (redeem).
So that ye offren noblis or starlinges.
Or elles silver spones, broches, or rynges.
Bowith your hedes under this holy buUe."

' In England as elsewhere forgers were busy. One is captured at
great expense in the year 51 Ed. Ill : "To John Compton, one of the
king's archers of his crown. In money paid to him for the expenses of
himself and other archers in his retinue, coming from Gloucester to London,
to conduct and deliver up Thomas Pardoner and Reginald Clere, forgers
of the seal of the Lord the Pope . . . also for hire of horses for the same
Thomas and Reginald and for divers other costs occurred in their safe
conduct, £6." Devon, "Issues of the Exchequer," 1837, p. 203.

READING IN CANTERBURV CATHEDRAL OF A FABRICATED PAPAL BULL, A.D. I399. [P- i^9-
[From the MS. Harl. 1319.)

THE PARDONERS 321
The effect of solemn parchments and large seals dis
played from the pulpit rarely failed upon the crowd, and
in some circumstances of more importance than the retail
selling of the merits of saints in heaven, recourse was
had to such exhibitions. When Henry of Lancaster
came to turn his cousin Richard II out of the English
throne, the first thing he did, according to Creton, was
to have a pretended papal bull, granting a plenary indul
gence, read from the pulpit of Canterbury cathedral and
commented by Archbishop Arundel (whose brother, the
earl. King Richard had caused to be summarily executed).
As Creton was not present when this scene, which he
describes only on hearsay, took place, the speech he
gives is the more interesting, for it may be considered an
average speech, such a one as was usual and likely to have
been pronounced on the occasion.
" My good people," the Archbishop is supposed to
have said, " hearken all of you here : you well know how
the king most wrongfully and without reason has banished
your lord Henry ; I have therefore obtained of the holy
father who is our patron, that those who shall forthwith
bring aid this day, shall every one of them have remission
of all sins whereby from the hour of their baptism they
have been defiled. Behold the sealed bull that the Pope
of renowned Rome hath sent me, my good friends, in
behalf of you all. Agree then to help him to subdue his
enemies, and you shall for this be placed after death with
those who are in Paradise."
" Then," continues the narrator, describing the effect
of the speech, " might you have beheld young and old,
the feeble and the strong, make a clamour, and regarding
neither right or wrong, stir themselves up with one
accord, thinking that what was told them was true,
for such as they have little sense or knowledge. The
archbishop invented this device . . ." '
' "Archaeologia," vol. xx. p. 53, Jobn Webb's translation. See
Appendix XIV, p. 439. 21

322 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
The burst of eloquence of Chaucer's pardoner is a
caricature, but not an unrecognizable one, of the grave
discourses of this sort.
The Pope has still more to say : " For some insigni
ficant sum of money, they extend the veil of a lying
absolution not over penitents, but over men of a hardened
conscience who persist in their iniquity, remitting, to
use their own words, horrible crimes without there having
been any contrition nor fulfilment of any of the prescribed
forms." It almost seems as if the Pope himself had
listened in disguise, on the road to Canterbury, to Chaucer's
man saying :
" I yow assoile by myn heyh power.
If ye woln offre, as clene and eek as cler
As ye were bom.
I rede that oure hoste schal bygynne.
For he is most envoliped in synne.
Come forth, sire ost, and offer first anoon.
And thou schalt kisse the reUquis everichccn.
Ye for a grote ; unbocle anone thi purse." '
Boccaccio, in one of the tales which he represents
himself as telling under the name of Dioneo, pictures,
he too, an ecclesiastic of great resemblance, m.oral and
physical, to Chaucer's man. He was called Fra Cipolla,
and was accustomed to visit Certaldo, Boccaccio's village
on the hill top, still very mmch new as it was then, with
the writer's house conspicuous in the main street. " This
Fra Cipolla was little of person, red-haired (Chaucer's
pardoner had " heer as yelwe as wex ") and merry of
countenance, the jolliest rascal in the world, and to boot,
for all he was no scholar, he was so fine a talker and so
ready of wit that those who knew him not would not
only have esteemed him a great rhetorician, but had
' Prologue to the " Canterbury Tales," and Prologue to the " Par-
dcner's Tale." ' ~ ¦ ¦ - -

THE PARDONERS 323
avouched him to be Tully himself, or maybe, Quintilian;
and he was gossip, or friend, or well-wisher, to well-nigh
every one in the country." If his hearers gave him a
little money or corn or anything, he would show them
the most wonderful relics ; and besides they would enjoy
the special protection of the patron saint of his order,
St. Anthony : " Gentlemen and ladies, it is, as you know,
your usance to send every year to the poor of our lord
Baron St. Anthony of your corn and of your oats, this
little and that much, according to his means and his
devoutness, to the intent that the blessed St. Anthony
may keep watch over your beeves and asses and swine
and sheep ; and, beside this, you use to pay, especially
such of you as are inscribed into our company, that small
due which is payable once a year." '
Such people had few scruples and knew how to profit
by those of others. They released their customers from
all possible vows, and remitted any penance, for money ;
they were a living encouragement to sin, making it so
easy to atone for. The more prohibitions, obstacles, or
penances were im.posed, the more their affairs prospered ;
they passed their lives undoing what the real clergy did,
the richer for it, and the clergy the poorer. The Pope
again tells us : " For a. small compensation they remit
vows of chastity, of abstinence, of pilgrimage beyond the
sea to Sts. Peter and Paul of Rome, or to St. James of
Compostela, and any other vows." They allow heretics
to re-enter the bosom of the Church, illegitimate children
to receive the sacred orders, they remove excommuni
cations and interdicts ; in short, as their 'power comes from
themselves alone, they see no reason to restrain it and
they use it to the full and without stint. Lastly, they
affirm that " it is in the name of the apostolic chamber
that they take all this money, and yet they are never known
' " The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio "... done into English
, . . by John Payne, London, 1886, vol. ii, p, 278, tenth Tale, sixth Day.

324 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
to give an account of it to any one : ' Horret et merito
indignatur animus talia reminisci.' " '
They went yet further ; they had formed regular
associations for systematically speculating on public cre-
duHty ; thus Boniface IX orders in 1390, that bishops
should make an inquiry into everything that concerns
these " religious or secular clerics, their people, their
accomplices, and their associations"; that they should
imprison them without other form of law, " de piano
ac sine strepitu et figura judicii " ; should make them
render accounts, confiscate their receipts, and if their
papers be not in order hold them under good keeping,
and refer the matter to the sovereign pontiff.
There were indeed authorized pardoners who paid
the produce of their receipts into the treasury of the
Roman Court. The learned Richard d'Angerville, other
wise de Bury, Bishop of Durham, called by Petrarch, whom
he had met at Avignon in 1330, " vir ardentis ingenii,"
speaks, in a circular of December 8, 1340, of apostolic
or diocesan letters, subject to a rigorous visa, with which
the regular pardoners had to be furnished.^ But many
did without them, and the bishop notices one by one
the same abuses as the Pope and as Chaucer. " Strong
complaints have come to our ears that the questors of this
kind, not without great and rash boldness, of their own
authority, and to the great danger of the souls who are
confided to us, openly setting at nought our jurisdiction,
distribute indulgences to the people, dispense with the
execution of vows, absolve the perjured, homicides, usurers,
and other sinners who confess to them ; and, for a little
money paid, grant remission for ill-atoned crimes, and
are given to a multitude of other abuses." Henceforward
all curates, vicars and chaplains must refuse to admit
these pardoners to preach or to bestow indulgenccsj
1 See Appendix, XV p. 440. 2 Same Appendix.

THE PARDONERS 325
whether in the churches or anywhere else, " if they be
not provided with letters or a special licence " from the
bishop himself. And this was a most proper injunction,
for with these bulls brought from far-off lands, adorned
with unknown seals " of popes and of cardynales, of
patriarkes and of bisshops," it was easy to make people
believe that all was in order. Meanwhile let all those
who are now wandering round the country be stripped
of what they have taken, and let " the money and any
other articles collected by them or on their behalf," be
seized : the common people not being always possessed
of actual cash, Chaucer's pardoner contented himself
with " silver spones, broches, or rynges." One more
allusion is to be noticed in this text to those associations
of pardoners which must have been so harmful.
They employed, in fact, inferior agents ; the general
credulity and the widespread wish to get rid of religious
trammels which men had imposed on themselves, in the
shape of vows or otherwise, or which had been imposed
on them on account of their sins, were a mine for the
perverse band, the veins of which they carefully worked.
By means of these subordinate representatives of their
fanciful power, they easily extended the field of their
operations, and the complicated threads of their webs
covered the whole kingdom, sometimes too strong to
be broken, sometimes too fine to be perceived.
Occasionally, too, the' bad example came from very
high quarters ; all had not the Bishop of Durham's virtue.
Walsingham relates with indignation the behaviour of a
cardinal who made a stay in England when the marriage
between Richard II and the emperor's sister, Anne of
Bohemia, was being negotiated. For money this prelate,
just like the comimon pardoners, removed excommuni
cations, dispensed people of pilgrimages to St. Peter,
St. James, or Jerusalem, and had the sum that would
have been spent on the journey duly computed and given

326 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
to him ; ' and it is much to be regretted from every point
of view that the curious tariff of the expenses of a journey
thus estimated has not come down to us.
The list of the misdeeds of pardoners was in truth
enormous, and it is found even larger on exploring the
authentic ecclesiastical documents than in the work of
Chaucer himself. Thus in a bull of Pope Urban V,
dated 1369, mention is made of practices apparently
untried by the otherwise experienced " gentil pardoner
of Rouncival." These doings were customary with those
employed by the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem
in England. Helped by the connivance of the " very
priors " of the order, they pretended to be " privileged "
and exempted from the formality of showing apostolic
letters before they were allowed to proceed with their
preachings and to offer to the people their " negotia
quasstuaria." The parish rectors and curates naturally
enough objected to such pretensions, but their complaints
were ill received, and the pardoners, to get rid of them,
sued them before some distant authority for contempt
of their cloth and privileges. While the suit was being
determined they remained free to act as they liked. Some
times they were so lucky as to secure sentence against
the priest who had tried to do his duty, and even succeeded
in having him excommunicated : which could of course
but be a cause of great merriment among the unholy tribe.
" Very often, also," adds Pope Urban, " when they
mean to hurt a rector or his curate, they go to his church
on some feast-day, especially at such time as the people
are accustomed to come and make their offerings. They
' " Excommunicatis gratiam absolutionis impendit. Vota peregrina-
tionis ad apostolorum limina, ad Terram Sanctam, ad Sanctum Jacobum
non prius remisit quam tantam pecuniam recepisset, quantam, juxta veram
sestimationem, in eisdem peregrinationibus expendere debuissent, et ut
cuncta concludam brevibus, nihil omnino petendum erat, quod non censuit,
ihtercedente pecunia, concedendum." " Historia AngUcana " ; Rolls
Series, vol. i. p. 452.

THE PARDONERS 327
begin then to make their own collections or to read the
name of their brotherhood or fraternity, and continue
until such an hour as it is not possible to celebrate mass
conveniently that day. Thus they manage perversely to
deprive these rectors and vicars of the offerings which
accrue to them at such masses." They have, on the
other hand, Divine service performed " in polluted or
interdicted places, and there also bury the dead ; they
use, as helps to their trade, simple and almost illiterate
subordinates, who spread errors and fables among people
as ignorant as themselves."
Such abuses and many others, constantly pointed out
by councils, popes, and bishops, moved the University
of Oxford to recommend, in the year 1414, the entire
suppression of pardoners, as being men of loose life and
lying speeches, spending their profits " with the prodigal
son," remitting to sinners their sins as well as their
penances, encouraging vice by the ease of their abso
lutions, and drawing the souls of uneducated people
" to Tartarus." But this request was not listened to,
and pardoners continued to prosper for the moment.'
At the same time that they sold indulgences, the
pardoners showed relics. They had been on pilgrimage
and had brought back pieces of bone and fragments of
all kinds, of holy origin, they said. But although the
credulous were not lacking among the multitude, the
disabused among the better sort were numerous and they
scoffed without mercy. The pardoners of Chaucer and
Boccaccio, and in the sixteenth century of Heywood and
Lyndsay,^ exhibited the most unexpected trophies. The
Chaucerian one, who possessed a piece of the sail of St.
' See Appendix XV, p. 444.
2 Lyndsay, " Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits " performed at Linlithgow,
1540; Early English Text Society, 1869; John Heywood, "The Pardoner
and the Frere, the Curate and Neybour Pratte," 1533; "The foure Ps,"
1545-

328 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Peter's boat is surpassed by Frate Cipolla, who had
brought back much better from Jerusalem. " I will,
as an especial favour, show you," said he, " a very holy
and goodly relic, which I myself brought aforetime from
the Holy Lands beyond seas, and that is one of the
Angel Gabriel's feathers, which remained in the Virgin
Mary's chamber, whenas he came to announce to
her in Nazareth ! " ' The feather, which was from the
tail of a parrot, through some joke played upon him
was replaced in the holy man's box by a few coals ;
when he perceived the metamorphosis he showed
no embarrassment, but began the narrative of his long
voyages, and explained how, instead of the feather, the
coals on which St. Lawrence was grilled would be seen
in his coffer. He had received them from " My Lord
Blamemenot Anitpleaseyou," the worthy patriarch of
Jerusalem, who also showed him " a finger of the Holy
Ghost as whole and sound as ever it was, . . . and one
of the nails of the cherubim, ... divers rays of the
star that appeared to the three Wise Men in the East,
and, a vial of the sweat of St. Michael whenas he fought
with the devil"; he possessed also "somewhat of the
sound of the bells of Solomon's Temple in a vial."
Poets' jests ; but less exaggerated than might be
thought. Was there not shown to the pilgrims at Exeter
a bit " of the candle which the angel of the Lord lit in
Christ's tomb " ? This was one of the relics brought
together in the venerable cathedral by Athelstan, " the
most glorious and victorious king," who had sent emis
saries at great expense on to the Continent to gather these
precious spoils. The list of their treasure-troves, which
has been preserved in a missal of the eleventh century,
comprises also a little of " the bush in which the Lord
spoke to Moses," and a lot of other curiosities. ^ Some
' Payne's " Boccaccio," vol. ii. pp. 280, 287.
2 "The Leofric Missal" (1050-1072), edited by F. E. Warren, 1883,
Clarendon Press, pp. Ixi, 3, 4.

THE PARDONERS 329
of the Virgin's milk was, as all know, venerated at
Walsingham and in various other places.
Matthew Paris relates that, in his time, the friar
preachers gave to Henry III a piece of white marble on
which there was the trace of a human foot ; nothing
less, according to the testimony of the inhabitants of
the Holy Land, than the mark of one of the Saviour's
feet, left by Him as a souvenir to His apostles after His
Ascension. " Our lord the king had this marble placed
in the- church of Westminster, to which he had already
lately offered some of the blood of Christ." '
In the fourteenth century kings continued to set the
example to the common people, and to collect relics of
undemonstrable authenticity. In the accounts of the
expenses of Edward III, in the thirty-sixth year of his
reign, a hundred shillings are put down for a messenger
who had brought him a vest of St. Peter's.^ In France,
at the same period, King Charles V " le sage " had one
day the curiosity to visit the cupboard at the Sainte
Chapelle, where the relics of the passion were kept. He
found there a phial with a Latin and Greek inscription
indicating that it contained some of the blood of Jesus
Christ. " Then," relates Christine de Pisan, " that wise
king, because some doctors have said that, on the day
that our Lord rose, nothing was left on earth of His
worthy body that was not all returned into Llim, would
hereupon know and inquire by learned men, natural
philosophers, and theologians, whether it could be true
that upon earth there were som.e of the real pure blood
of Jesus Christ. Examination was made by the said
learned men assembled about this matter ; the said phial
was seen and visited with great reverence and solemnity
of lights, in which when it was hung or lowered could
' " Historia Anglorum " (Historia minor), ed. Sir F. Madden, London,
1866 ; vol. iii. p. 60, Rolls Series.
2 Devon's "Issues of the Exchequer," 1837, p. 176.

330 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
be clearly seen the fluid of the red blood flow as freshly
as though it had been shed but three or four days since :
which thing is no small marvel, considering the passion
was so long ago. And these things I know for certain
by the relation of my father who was present at that
examination, as philosophic officer and counsellor of the
said prince."
After this examination made by great " solemnity of
lights," the doctors declared themselves for the authen
ticity of the miracle ; ' which was not in reality more
surprising than that at the cathedral at Naples, where the
blood of the patron saint of the town may still be seen to
licjuify several times a year, and for several days each time.
In every country of Europe the pardoners enjoyed,
not to say endured, the same reputation and acted in the
same manner. Be it France, Germany, Italy, or Spain,
they were found living, so long as there remained any,
as Chaucer's pardoner did. In France, Rabelais has
the cheaters cheated by his, beloved Panurge. The clever
vaurien used to place his penny in their plate so skilfully
that it seemed to be a silver piece : for which he made
bold to take change, leaving only a farthing. " ' And I
did the same,' said he, ' in all the churches where we
have been.' — ' Yea, but,' said I, ' you . . . are a thief,
and commit sacrilege.' — ' True,' said he, ' as it seems to
you ; but it, does not seem so to me. For the pardoners
give it me as a gift when they say, in offering me the relics
to kiss : Centuplum accipies — that is, that for one penny
I take a hundred ; for accipies is spoken by them accord
ing to the manner of the Hebrews, who use the future
tense instead of the imperative, as you have in the book,
Diliges Dominum, id est, dilige.' " ^
I " Le livre des fais et bonnes mceurs du sage roy Charles," by Christine
de Pisan, chap, xxxiii. vol. i. p. 633 ; " Nouvelle Collection de Memoires,"
ed. Michaud and Poujoulat, Paris, 1836.
2 " Pantagruel," book ii. chap, xvii., " Comment Panurge gagnoit
les pardons."

THE PARDONERS 331
Pardoners, of course, never appear on the boards of
the old French theatre, but to be derided :
" Pardoner : I mean to show you the comb of the
cock that crowed at Pilate's, and half a plank of Noah's
great ark. . . . Look, gentlemen, here is a feather of
one of the seraphs near God. Don't think it is a joke ;
here it is for you to see.
Triacleur : Gogsblood ! 'tis the quill from a gcose
he has eaten at his dinner ! " and so on.'
The same in Spain. Lazarillo de Tormes, the page
of many masters, happens, at one time, to be in the service
of a pardoner : the very same individual Chaucer had
described two hundred years before. He, too, knows
how to use Latin when profitable : " Hee woulde alwayes
bee informed before he came, which were learned and
which not. When he came to those which he understood
were learned, he woulde be sure never to speake worde
of Latin, for feare of stumbling : but used in suche places
a gentle kind of Castilian Spanish, his tong alwayes at
libertie. And contrariwise whensoever hee was informed
of the reverend Domines (I meane such as are made priestes
more for money than for learning and good behaviour), to
hear him speake amongs suche men you would saye it
were St. Thomas : for hee woulde then two houres to
gether talke Latin, at lest which seemed to bee, though
it was not." ^ A trick which, as is well known, Sganarelle,
many years after, did not disdain to use when, put upon
his last shifts as the " Medecin malgre lui."
Pardoners lived merrily ; certain it is that after a
busy day they must have been cheerful companions at
the inn. The thought of the multitude of sins they
had pardoned, of excommunications they had removed,
' " Farce d'un pardonneur, d'un triacleur et d'une tavemiere," Viollet
le Due, " Ancien theatre frangais," Paris, 1854—57, vol. ii. p. 50.
2 " The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes, . . . drawen
out of Spanish by David Rouland, of Angelsey." London, 1 586, Sig. G. iU.

332 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
of penalties they had remitted — themselves mere vaga
bonds threatened with the jail or gallows — the knowledge
of their impunity, the strangeness of their existence, the
triumphant success of the mad harangues in which they
attributed to themselves the keys of heaven, must have
made their hearts swell with uncontrollable merriment.
Their heads were filled with anecdotes, sacred or profane ;
native coarseness and assumed devotion, the real and the
artificial man, jostled each other to the sound of jugs and
vessels clattering on the table. See in the margin of an
old psalter the lean figure of Master Reynard ' : a crozier
between his paws, a mitre on his head, he is preaching
a sermon to the wondering crowd of ducks and geese of
the poultry yard. The gesture is full of unction, but
the eye shaded by the tawny hair has a cruel glitter, which
ought to give warning of the peroration. But no, the
poultry yard clucks devoutly and fears nothing ; woe to
the ducks when the mitre has fallen : " And Thou, Lord,
shalt laugh at them," says the psalmist on the same page.
A singular knowledge of the human heart those indi
viduals must have had, going through such strange
experiences day by day. Never were more unworthy
beings supposedly clothed with greater supernatural powers.
The deformed monster squatting on the apse of the cathe
dral laughs and grimaces hideously on his airy pedestal.
And up to the clouds rise the fretted spires ; the
chiselled pinnacles detach themselves like lace upon the
sky ; the saints pray their eternal prayer under the porch ;
the bells send forth their peals into space, and souls are
seized with a thrill, with that mysterious awe caused by
the sublime. The monster laughs ; hearts believe them
selves purified, but he has seen their ugly sores, a sinister
hand will touch them and prevent their cure ; the edge
' A favourite subject among miniaturists, and to be found in several
manuscripts (2 B. vn ; 10 E. IV) in the British Museum. See the head
piece of the present chapter.

THE PARDONERS 333
of the roof reaches the clouds ; but his look goes
through the dormer window, he detects a cracking beam,
worm-eaten boards giving way, and a host of obscure
creatures slowly pursuing under the wooden shafts their
secular labour of destruction : he laughs and grimaces
hideously. On the tavern bench the pardoner is still seated.
There come Chaucer, the knight, the squire, the friar,
the host — old acquaintances. We are by ourselves, no
one need be afraid to speak, the foaming ale renders
hearts expansive ; and the unseen coils of that tortuous
soul unfold to view, he gives the summary of a whole
life, the theory of his existence, the key to his secrets.
What matters his frankness ? he knows that it cannot
hurt him ; time and again has the bishop brought his
practices to light, but the crowd always troops around
him. And who knows if his companions — who knows
if his more enlightened companions, to whom he shows
the concealed springs of the automaton — will, to-morrow,
believe it lifeless .'' their memory, their reason will tell
them so, yet still their heart will doubt. If custom is
the half of belief, theirs is well-rooted ; how much more
that of the multitude ! And the pardoner himself, do
you suppose that he always sees clearly what he is, do
you think that his scepticism is absolute ? he for whom
nothing is holy, whose very existence is a perpetual
mockery of sacred things, he also has his hours of doubt
and terror, he trembles before that formidable power
which he said he held in his hands, and of which he has
made a toy ; he does not possess it, but others may, and he
stands aghast ; the monster looks upon himself and is
afraid. Very easy it was to lead the popular belief into the
channel of the marvellous. Decrees had been deemed
necessary to prevent the conjuring up of spectres or ghosts
jn those long watches passed with the dead ; disobedience

334 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
was attempted, people believed they succeeded. In
presence of the horrible a strange reaction of the heart
would take place, a wind of madness passed predisposing
men to see and believe anything, a nervous and demo
niacal merriment seized upon all, and dances and lascivious
games were started. Dancing went on in the cemeteries
during the solemn vigils of religious feasts, there was
dancing also during the watch for the dead. The Council
of London, in 1342, prohibited " the superstitious customs
which cause prayer to be neglected, and unlawful" and
indecent meetings " held in such places.' The Council
of York, in 1367, also forbade " those guilty games and
follies, and all those perverse customs . . . which trans
form a house of tears and prayers, into a house of laughing
and excess." The palmers' gild of Ludlow allowed its
members to go to night-watches of the dead, provided
that they abstained from raising apparitions and from
indecent games. ^ As to professional sorcerers, the belief
in them was so profound that they were sent to the stake,
as happened to Retronilla of Meath, convicted of having
manufactured powders with " spiders and black worms
like scorpions, mingling with them a certain herb called
milfoil, and other detestable herbs and worms." 3 She
had also made such incantations that " the faces of certain
women seemed horned like the heads of goats " ; there-
' Labbe, " Sacrosancta concilia," Florence edition, vol. xxv. col. 1 177,
and vol. xxvi. col. 462. In 1419, Henry Chicheley, Archbishop of Canter
bury, ordered public prayers, litanies, and processions, to protect the King
of England and his army against the wicked operations of magicians.
Wilkins, " Concilia Magnae Britanniae," vol. iii. p. 392.
2 " Si vero masculus quisquam voluerit, ut est moris, ejusdem defuncti
vel defuncte nocturnis vigiliis interesse, hoc fieri permittatur, dumtamen
nee monstra larvarum inducere, nee corporis vel fame sue ludibria, nee
ludos alios inhonestos, presumat aliqualiter attemptare." Toulmin Smith,
" English Gilds," p. 194.
3 " Araneis et aliis vermibus nigris ad modum scorpionum, cum quadam
herba quas dicitur miUefolium et aUis herbis et vermibus detestabiUbus."
Thos. Wright, " Proceedings against Dam.e AUce Kyteler, 1324," Camden
Society, 1 843, p. 32.

THE PARDONERS 335
fore she had her due punishment and " was burnt before
an immense multitude of people with all the accustomed
ceremonial." Such facts explain the existence of the
pardoner. Let us add that the search for the philosopher's stone
was the constant occupation of many renowned doctors ;
every one had not that clear good sense, good humour
and penetrating spirit which permitted Chaucer to smil
ingly unravel before us the mysteries of the alchemist,
shaking the alembics and retorts, and in the odd-shaped
apparatus which frightened the imagination, showing not
the newly created ingot of pure metal, but the mixture
prepared beforehand by the impostor.' Not a plant or
a stone without supernatural virtues ; the vain beliefs
inherited from the ancients had been rejuvenated and
expanded. People thirsted for such pretended learning.
Gower thinks he does well to insert in a love poem all
he believes he knows on the constitution of the world
and the virtues of things ; ^ even with professionally
learned men the mass of fabulous statements fills volumes.
Bartholomew the Englishman, whose work is an encyclo
paedia of scientific knowledge in the thirteenth century,
is positive that the diamond destroys the effect of venom
and of magic incantations, and that it reveals its wearer's
fear ; that the topaz prevents sudden death, etc.3
A pleasure it is, and like a whiff of fresh air when
emerging from a damp cellar, to remember that in an
age not totally exempt from these weaknesses no one
condemned them with more eloquence than our Moliere :
" Without speaking of other things,'.' said he, " I have
1 " The Canons YeomEns Tale."
2 The whole of book vii of his " Confessio Amantis " is devoted
to the exposition of a system of the world and to the description of the inner
nature of beings and substances. The " Roman de la Rose " is not less
explicit on these matters (confession of Nature to Genius).
3 " De Proprietatibus Rerum," lib. xvi, a work of immense repute,
translated into English by Trevisa in 1398, into French^ Spanish, Dutgh,

336

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

never been able to conceive how even the smallest pecu
liarities of the fortune of the least man could be found
written in the skies. What relation, what intercourse,
what correspondence can there be between us and worlds
separated from our earth by so frightful a distance ? and
whence can this fine science have come to men ? What
god has revealed it ? or what experience can have shaped
it from the observation of that great number of stars which
have net been seen twice in the same arrangement .'' "

.4. PARDONER (CHAUCER's PARDONER).
{From the EUesmere MS.)
Trouble and eloquence lost ; there will always be a
Timiocles to observe with a wise air : " I am incredulous
enough as to a great many things, but for astrology, there
is nothing more certain and more constant than the success
of the horoscopes which it draws." '
So vanished into smoke the tempests which Chaucer,
Langland, and Wyclif raised against the hypocritical
pardoners of their day. They lingered on till the six-
' " Les Amants magnifiques."

THE PARDONERS 337
teenth century, and then were entirely suppressed in the
twenty-first session of the oecumenical council of Trent,
July 16, 1562, Pius IV being Pope. It is stated in the
ninth chapter of the " Decree of Reform," published in
that session, that since " no further hope can be enter
tained of amending the questors of alms " {eleemosynarum
quastores), otherwise pardoners, " the use of them and
their name are entirelv abolished henceforth in all Chris-
tendom : " ' the first of old-time wayfarers to entirely
disappear. ' " Conciliorum generaUum Ecclesiae Catholicse," vol. iv. p. 261,
" Pauli V. Pont. max. auctoritate editus," Rome, 1623. See Appendix XV,
P- 444-

t IT,
? « «
B a M .^_.J II
A PILGRIMAGE TOWN, ROCAMADOUR, IN GUYENNE.
[Present state.)

CHAPTER III
PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES
I
IN spite of the merits of physicians^ soothsayers,
and sorcerers, maladies sometimes resisted the best
remedies, and the patient would then vow to go
on a pilgrimage, ride, walk, or have himself carried
there, and pray for his cure. He went to our Lady of
Walsingham, for example, or to St. Thomas of Canter
bury, whose medical powers were considered, beyond
comparison, the best of all : " Optimus egrorum, medicus
fit Thomas bonorum," was the motto stamped on some
of the pewter ampullae, with miraculous water in them,
which pilgrims brought back as a souvenir from Canter
bury : " For good people that are sick, Thomas is the
best of physicians." And surely praying at his shrine,
after an open-air journey on foot or horseback, was a better
way of preserving one's health than swallowing the black
beetles and fat bats of John of Gaddesden, the court
physician. 338

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 339
Pilgrimages were incessant ; they were made to
fulfil a vow as in cases of illness or of great peril, or in
expiation of sins. Confessors frequently gave the going
on a pilgrimage as penance, and sometimes ordered that
the traveller should go barefoot or in his shirt. " Com
mune penaunce," says Chaucer's parson in his great
sermon, speaking of atonement which must be public,
" commune," because the sin has been public too, " is
that prestes enjoynen men comunly in certeyn caas, as
for to goon, peradventure, naked in pilgrimage or barfot,"
that is to say, naked in their shirts. In accordance with
a vow made during a tempest, .^neas Sylvius Piccolomini,
later Pope Pius II, walked ten miles barefoot on the frozen
ground, to White Kirk, near North Berwick, and had, on
his return, " to be born, rather than led by his servants." '
Another motive for pilgrimages, and, more than any
other, characteristic of the times, was to annoy the king.
Thus in the fourteenth century English people flocked
to the tomb of the selfish, narrow-minded and vengeful
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, of whom popular prejudice
had made a saint.^ The crowd hastened through a spirit
of opposition to Pontefract, where the rebel had been
decapitated, by order of his relative, King Edward II, and
the pilgrims became every year more numerous, to the
great scandal of the sovereign and of the Archbishop of
York. A letter of this prelate shows the uselessness of the
' Winter of 1435 ; he was coming on a mission to James I of Scotland.
" Romance of a King's Life," pp. 52, 97.
» First cousin to Edward II, executed in 1322. Froissart had no doubt
as to the authenticity of his miracles. " Thomas .erle of Lancastre, who
was a noble and a wyse holy knyght, and hath done syth many fayre myracles
in Pomfret, where he was beheeded " (vol. i. chap. vi. in Lord Bemers'
translation). The body of Charles de Blois, killed at the battle of Auray
in 1364, but this one an undoubtedly pious warrior, also worked miracles,
and Froissart imagined that Urban V had canonized him : " His body [was]
after sanctifyed by the grace of God and called Saynt Charles, and canonized
by Pope Urban the V ; for he dyde, and yet dothe many fayre miracles
dayly." Vol. i. cap. 226 of Lord Berners' translation.

340 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
prohibitions : the idea of a semblance of persecution of
believers devised by an archbishop only excited zeal and
devotion ; men hoped to please the martyr by allowing
themselves to be slightly martyred. Thus, while awaiting
a canonization that never came, though insisted upon by the
next king, crowds collected near the tomb, so numerous
and tumultuous that there happened " homicides and
mortal wounds, . . . and that greater dangers yet and
doubtless most imminent are to be feared." '
All this began the very year after the execution of the
" saint." The official was enjoined to hinder these
meetings by any means, and to disperse them until the
Pope should pronounce. But the gatherings continued,
and Henry of Lancaster wrote in 1327 to the Archbishop
of York asking him to refer the matter to the Sovereign
Pontiff, and " bear witness to the fame of the miracles
which God works by our very dear lord and brother." 2
The same year the Commons took the question in hand
and petitioned for the canonization of the same Thomas,
which was scarcely parliamentary business. 3 In 1338,
a London pepperer had for sale a mazer bowl ornamented
with an " image of St. Thomas of Lancester." 4 Hum
phry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, who died
in 1 36 1, bequeathed money for pious men to make a
variety of pilgrimages on his behalf, and he spec'ally
recommended that " a good man and true ' should be
' " Non absque homicidiis aliisque laet.dibus verberibus . . . et de
majoribus periculis verisimiliter imminentibus multipliciter formidatur . . ,"
A.D. 1323, "Historical Papers from the Northern Registers," ed. Raine,
1873, p. 324, Rolls Series.
2 The archbishop did write to this effect to the Pope (John XXII) on
February 24, 1327, asking him to make inquiry with a view to canonization.
" Historical Papers from the Northern Registers," p. 340.
3 Petition to ParUament, i Ed. Ill, 1326-7. "Rolls of Parliament,"
vol. ii. p. 7.
4 " Memorials of London," Riley, 1868, p. 203. The miracles worked
by the same are also noted in the contemporary " Croniques de London "
(Camden Society, ed, G. J. Aungier, p. 46), and by many others.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIA/IAGES 341
hired and charged to go to " Pountfreyt and to offer
there, at the tomb of Thomas, late earl of Lancaster, 40s." '
To make a saint of a rebel was the most energetic
means of protesting against the king, and the people
would not miss this opportunity under some of their
sovereigns. Henry III, in 1266, had been obliged to
forbid Simon de Montfort being considered as a saint,
although Simon having died under excommunication, as
was represented to the king by the bishops and barons,
authors of the petitions comprised in the " Dictum de
Kenilworth," ^ had little chance of ever being canonized.
Latin hymns were nevertheless composed in his honour,
as for a saint. 3
The rebel was hardly dead than popular feeling,
often unfavourable to him during his life, forthwith
recognized in him nothing else than the hero who had
fought against a tyrant, and, through sympathy for the
man, or antipathy for the king, assigned therefore to him
a place in heaven. The active revolt, rudely interrupted
' J. Nichol's "Wills of the Kings and Queens of England," 1780,
p. 54. A chapel had been built on the hill where the earl had been beheaded.
The offerings brought there by the pilgrims were, in 1334, the subject of a
curious debate between the prior and the convent of Pontefract on the one
hand, and the liord of Wake on the other ; this lord had " taken possession
of the said chapel and the offerings brought there, and had taken the keys
with him." The prior and the convent in a petition to Parliament requested
to have the " administration of these offerings," as " spiritual things within
their parish and belonging to their church," " Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii.
2 " Ne . . . pro sancto vel justo reputetur, cum in excommunicatione
sit defunctus, sicut sancta tenet Ecclesia." " Dictum de Kenilworth," § viii.,
in " Select Charters," ed. Stubbs, 1870, p. 410. .
3 Salve Symon Montis Fortis
tocius flos militie,
Duras penas passus mortis,
protector gen lis Angliae.
" Ora pro nobis, beate Symon, ut digni efiiciamur promissionibus Christi."
Hymn composed shortly after the death of Simon ; Warton, " History
of English Poetry," ed. Hazlitt, 1871, vol. U. p. 48.

342 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
by punishment, continued thus in the latent state, and
every one came to see God Himself take the part of the
oppressed, and proclaim the injustice of the ruler by
working miracles at the tomb of his vict m. The sovereign
defended himself as he could ; he dispersed the rabble
and prohibited the miracles.
De par le Roi, defense a Dieu
De faire miracle en ce liev,
read an ironical distich written in France in the " Diacre
Paris " days. Similarly disposed, Edward II, on October 2,
1323, wrote "to his faithful John de Stonore and
John de Bousser," ordering an inquiry which would
be followed by graver measures. He recalled to them
that " a little time ago Henry de Montfort and Henry
de Wylynton, our enemies and rebels, on the advice of
the royal Court, were drawn and hanged at Bristol, and
it had been decided that their bodies shou'd remain attached
to the gibbet, so that others might abstain from similar
crimes and misdeeds against us." But on the contrary,
the people made relics of these bloody and mutilated
remains, and surrounded them with respect. Reginald
de Montfort, William de Clyf, William Curteys, and
John his brother, and some others, in order to render
the king odious to the people, had organized false miracles
at the gibbet where the corpses of these rebels were still
hanging, which was nothing short cf " idolatry."
Severe measures were required in several places at the
same time ; while these bodies were venerated at Bristol,
a mere image of Thomas of Lancaster, in the Cathedral
of London, was attracting pilgrims and working miracles.
In this same year, 1323, on June 28th, Edward II is found
writing with great irritarion to the Bishop of London :
" It has come to our ears — and it is very displeasing
to us — that many among the people of God, confided to
your charge, victims of a diabolical trickery, crowd round

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIAiAGES 343
a panel placed in your church of St. Paul's, where are
to be seen statues, sculptures, or images, and among
others that of Thomas, late Earl of Lancaster, a rebel,
our enemy. Silly visitors, without any authorization
from the Roman Church, venera,te and worship this
image as a holy thing, and affirm that it there works
miracles : this is a disgrace for the whole Church, a shame
for us and for you, a manifest danger for the souls of
the aforesaid people, and a dangerous example to others." '
The bishop knows it, continues the king, and secretly
encourages these practices without any other motive
than that of profiting by the offerings, thus making
"shameful gains. ... By which," adds Edward II, "we
are deeply afflicted." The usual prohibitions follow.^
These were occasional pilgrimages. Others were in
favour for a much longer time owing to the reputation
of the departed for sanctity, and not to political motives.
For many years crowds came, as we have seen, to visit
the tomb of Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole.
Even in this, fashion ruled ; some relics or tombs of her
mits or of saints enjoyed for a period universal favour ;
then all of a sudden, through some great miracle, another
saint rose to pre-eminence, and the others, by degrees,
sank into obscurity.
Convents, which had neither relics nor bodies of
illustrious saints to attract pilgrims, nor a marvellous thorn-
tree like that of Glastonbury, would have sometimes a pious
artist to fabricate an image fit to draw visitors ; it would
be inaugurated with solemnity, work miracles, it was hoped,
and enjoy a more or less wide fame. Thomas of Burton,
Abbot of Meaux, near Beverley, relates in the chronicle
of his rich monastery, written by himself at the end of
the fourteenth century, one of the most remarkable facts
of this kind. Abbot Hugh of Leven, one of his prede-
' Rymer's " Fcedera," edit. 1704, vol. iv. p. 20.
' Ibid., vol. iU. p. 1033.

344 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
cessors, had in the first half of the century ordered a new
crucifix for the choir of the chapel : " And the artist
never worked at any fine and important part, except on
Fridays, fasting on bread and water. And he had all
the time a naked man under his eyes, and he laboured
to give to his crucifix the beauty of the model. By the
means of this crucifix, the Almighty worked open miracles
continually. It was then thought that if access to this
crucifix were allowed to women, the common devotion
would be increased and great advantages would result
from it for our monastery. Upon which the Abbot of
Citeaux, by our request, granted us leave to let men and
honest women approach the said crucifix, provided,
however, that the women did not enter the cloister, the
dormitory, and other parts of the monastery. . . . But
profiting by this license, to our misfortune, women began
to come in increasing numbers to the said crucifix, while
in them devotion is cool, and all they want is to see the
church, and they increase our expenses by our having
to receive them." '
This naive complaint is interesting from several points
of view ; it plainly shows what was done to bring such
or such a sanctuary into favour with the pilgrims ; ^ in
the present case the effort did not succeed, the prodigies
do not seem to have long responded to the expectation,
' See Appendix XVI, p. 445.
^ On the advertising of certain pilgrimages by means, sometim^ef, of the
most famous of mediaeval romances, see the capital work of Joseph Bedier,
" Les Legendes epiques, Recherches sur la formation des Chansons de Geste,"
Paris, 1908, 4 vols. On the especial veneration of saints who had been
road and bridge buUders, see III, p. 72, where, speaking of the immense
popularity of the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostela in the eleventh
century, Bedier says : " Ce fut I'epoque heroique du pelerinage. C'est alors
que la route romaine commence a se peupler d'asiles pour les voyageurs ;
c'est alors qu'exercent leur activite les saints que I'EgUse venere parce qu'ils
furent de bons ingenieurs, reparant les chaussees, dessechant les marecages,
jetant des ponts sur les rivieres et les torrents, saint Dominique de la Calzada,
et ce Francais, saint Aleaunie de Burgos, ancien moine de la Chaise-Dieu,"

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 345
and people came only from curiosity to visit the church
and the fine crucifix of the monastery. From the artistic
point of view the fact is still more important, for this is
the most ancient example of sculpture from the nude
living model to be found in mediaeval England ; and this
anonymous sculptor ought to be remembered, which he
is not, as one of the precursors of the Renaissance in his
country. Another attempt to make a chapel popular had been
tried in the parochial church of Foston ; but the Arch
bishop of York, William Grenefeld, was scandalized, and
by a letter full of good sense piit an end to the " great
concourse of simple people who came to visit a certain
image of the Holy Virgin recently placed in the church,
as if this image had something more divine than any other
images of the sort." '
The fact was, as may be noticed even in our days,
that, with or without the co-operation of the clergy, some
statues had a far better reputation than others ; wonders
were expected of them, and they were worshipped accord
ingly ; the same vicissitudes were observable for images
as for relics and tombs of saints. This statue had healed
.sick people without number, and that one was known to
have moved, to have made a sign, to have spoken a word.
Pictures of miracles worked by statues constantly recur
in manuscripts ; one, for instance, is to be found in
several English books of the fourteenth century.^ It
shows how a poor painter, being busy colouring and gilding
' " Sane nuper ad aures nostras pervenit quod ad quandam imaginem
beatae Virginis in ecclesia parochiali de Foston noyiter coUocatam magnus
simplicium est concursus, acsi in eadem plus quam in aliis similibus imaginibus
aUquid numinis appareret." Year 1313, Wilkins' "ConciUa," vol. U.
P- 423- ^ See e.g. MS. 2 B. vii. in the British Museum, fol. 211, and
10 E. IV., fol. 209. The story of this miracle has been told by numberless
authors in the Middle Ages ; the text of one version of the tale, with refer
ences to the others, will be found in G. F. Warner, " Miracles de Nostre
Dame," Roxburghe Club, 1885, pp. xxxiy and 63.

346 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
a statue of the Virgin, with a most ugly devil under her
feet, the Evil One, angry at such an unflattering portrait,
came and broke the ladder on which the artist was
standing ; but as he was falling and about to be killed,
the stone Virgin bent towards him, and extending her
arm held him safe until help came.
Statues did not always act so graciously, but were
guided by circumstances, as was seen in the church of
St. Paul-extra-muros at Rome. A visitor, according to
the relation of the learned Thomas Gascoigne, chancellor
of Oxford, had insulted the image of the saint, saying :
" ' Why hast thou got a sword, I mean to have thy sword,'
and he was trying to take it out of the hands of the statue.
But through God's doing, the statue raised its sword on
the impious man, and clove his head to the chin ; and
then death followed. This happened at the time when
Eugene IV was Pope of Rome, and a witness of the scene
reported it to me ; this witness was a beadel of the said
Pope, called Master Erasmus Fullar, a priest of the
kingdom of Hungary." '

II
Apart from pilgrimages, in fashion but for a time,
English people usually went to Durham to visit the tomb
of the holy Confessor Cuthbert, and the place where was
kept his ever-victorious banner ; to the shrine of King
Edward the Confessor in Westminster ; to St. Albans,
St. Edmund's Bury, St. David's, on account of the saints
after whom these towns are named ; to Chichester, to
worship the body of St. Richard the Bishop ; to Glaston
bury, with its holy thorn-tree, and its church founded
' " Loci e libro ¦veritatum, passages selected from Gascoigne's Theological
Dictionary" (1403-1458), edit. Thorold Rogers, O.xford, 1881, p. 206.
This Fullar is known to have come to England, where he saw Gascoigne.
Eugene IV was Pope during the second quarter of the fifteenth century.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 347
by St. Joseph of Arimathea ; to Waltham, where a cross
of black marble had been miraculously found in the time
of King Knut. Lincoln, York, Peterborough, Hayles with
its Holy Blood, Winchester (for St. Swithin, who, among
other merits, had had that of being a bridge builder), Holy
well, Beverley with its St. John, and a number of other
places,' shrines and miraculous and wishing wells had
also attractions for the pilgrim ; but none could stand
comparison with Walsingham and Canterbury.
At Walsingham there were a church and a chapel, now
destroyed, the latter with a miraculous bejewelled statue of
the Virgin, and some of her milk, the chapel being exactly
similar, it was said, to the Santa Casa of Loretto, which
was a wonder in itself, for the English copy had been built
in the eleventh century, long before the Casa was heard
of. Owing to innumerable gifts the place was resplen
dent with gold and precious stones. Visiting Cologne
and the famous shrine of the wise men of the East, Roger
•Ascham writes : " The three kings be not so rich, I believe,
as was the Lady of Walsingham." ^ People came in
crowds ; many among the British kings came too ; 3
the road leading to Walsingham was called the palmers'
way, and chapels were built along its line. The town
was full of inns, hospitals, and religious buildings, as
was usually the case with the more famous of these
places. The milk and the image, as most of the pilgrimage
statues, were destroyed at the Reformation, some of the
wooden ones being burnt like the heretics, or with them,
at Smithfield, as happened when Friar Forest died at
' " No fewer than thirty-eight of these pilgrims' Meccas in the County
of Norfolk alone." Sidney Heath, " Pilgrim Life in the Middle Ages,"
London, 191 1, p. 30.
a To Edw. Raven, Jan. 20, i 5 5 1 ." Whole Works," Giles, 1865, p. 252.
3 " Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, David Bruce, Q. Catherine after
Flodden, Henry VII and Henry VIII visited the famous shrine." Walcott,
" EngUsh Minsters," 1879, II, 229.

348 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
the stake.' The gold and silver ones were turned to
more practical uses. " I have pullyd down," Dr. London,
one of the Visitors of religious houses, writes to Thomas
Cromwell, " the image of our Lady at Caversham, wher
unto wasse great pilgremage. The image ys platyd over
with sylver, and I hav-e putte yt in a cheste fast lackyd
(locked) and naylyd uppe, and by the next bardge that
commyth from Redyng to London yt shall be browght
to your Lordeschippe. I have also pullyd down the place
she stode in with all other ceremonyes, as lights, schrds
(shrouds), crowchys (crosses), and imagies of wex hangyng
about the chapel, and have defacyed the same thorowly
in exchuyng of any farther resortt thedyr. ... At
Caversham ys a propre lodginge wher the chanon lay,
with a fayer garden and an orchard mete to be be
stowed upon som frynde of your lordeschip's in thees
parties." ^
In especially large numbers people hired horses at
Southwark, with relays at Rochester, and set out for St.
Thomas of Canterbury. This was the highroad to the
continent ; a regular service of hired horses had been
established along it. Twelvepence was paid from South
wark to Rochester, twelvepence from Rochester to Canter
bury, sixpence from Canterbury to Dover. The horses
were branded in a prominent manner, so that unscrupulous
travellers should not be tempted to quit the road and
appropriate their steeds. 3 The sanctuary of St. Thomas
had, indeed, a world-wide reputation.
We can scarcely realize now the thrill of horror that
went throughout Christendom, as far as the Levant, as
far as Iceland, when the news came that Archbishop
' The " Image of Darvell Gathern," greatly venerated by the Welsh,
was burnt with him. EUis, " Original Letters," ist series, II, 82 ff.
2 EUis, ibid., pp. 79, 80, Sept. 1537 (.?).
3 Patent of 19 Richard II in the appendix to Mr. Karkeek's essay,
" Chaucer's Schipman and his Barge, ' The Maudelayne,' " Chaucer Society
'* Essays," 1884,

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 349
Thomas Becket,' Legate of the Pope, former chancellor
of England, had been massacred in his cathedral of Canter
bury by four knights of Henry II, on the evening of
Tuesday, December 29, 11 70, his brain and blood splash
ing the pavement. Everything combined to increase the
enormity of the crime ; the holiness of the place, which
should have afforded sanctuary, even to a murderer, the
rank of the victim in the hierarchy of the Church, the
dying man's brave and pious words, the presence of
the cross born at his side by his assistant, Edward Grim,
himself severely wounded, and, above all, the fame and
character of the prelate, an archbishop Turpin of real
life, who, like the companion of Roland, and while already
engaged in holy orders, had proved a plucky military
leader, unimpeachable, moreover, from the moral point
of view, and fearless throughout his life. Like the
Archbishop of Reims of the " Song of Roland," whose
brain had flowed down his face,- he had died at the hands
of barbarians, who had not, however, the excuse of
being infidels.
Rarely did a single act cause such universal indignation.
Public opinion proclaimed Thomas a saint even before
the Pope could take action, which he did, however, with
a promptitude rare in such cases, canonization being
proclaimed in February, 11 73. The body was scarcely
buried in the crypt of the cathedral,3 than pilgrims came
to it, their numbers ceaselessly increasing. The life of
the archbishop was the subject of numberless miniatures,4
' Becquet or Becchet, of Norman blood, both on his father's side, who
was from Thierceville, as on his mother's, who was from Caen.
2 Desuz le frunt Ii bullit la cervelle.
A real Turpin, but who long survived the event, was Archbishop o.
Reims at the time of the Roncevaux disaster.
3 Moved in July, 1220 to Trinity Chapel, behind the high altar.
4 A beautifully illustrated fragment of a life of the saint, in French verse
of the thirteenth century, has been published with facsimiles by Paul Meyer :
" Fragments d'une vie de saint Thomas de Cantorbery," Paris, 1885. A

350 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
sculptures,' painted windows. Some of the latter, dating
back to the thirteenth century, still remain at Canterbury,
Sens, Chartres, and other places. Matthew Paris wrote
and illuminated with his own hand, Walsingham tells
us, a biography of the archbishop ; churches dedicated
to him multiplied in England and out of England : " On
the heights of Fourvieres," wrote Dean Stanley, " over
looking the city of Lyons, is a chapel dedicated to Saint
Thomas of Canterbury. Four years before his death,
it is said, he was walking on the terraced bank of the
river underneath, and being asked to whom the chapel
should be dedicated, he replied, ' To the next martyr,'
on which his companion remarked. ' Perhaps, then, to
you.' " ^
The prophecy was fulfilled. Entirely renovated,
and forming now part of the pilgrimage church at
Fourvieres, such a chapel still exists, still dedicated to
St. Thomas ; it has been allotted to the fraternity
of " Notre Dame de Compassion " for their exercises,
which consist chiefly in praying for the conversion of
England. On the threshold are engraved four riming
Latin lines : " Happy the place, happy the church where
Thomas's memory survives ; happy the land which gave
birth to the prelate, happy that which received him, an
exile." 3
Churches dedicated to him were especially numerous
in Normandy, from which his family came, a chapel at
remarkable thirteenth-century picture of the murder, with obvious attention
to historical exactitude, is in one of the MSS. of the Yates Thompson CoUec
tion, reproduced in the Catalogue of the sale (March 23, 1920), lot xxxiv.
' Something yet remains of the bas relief representing his life above the
portal of the southern transept of the cathedral at Bayeux.
» " Historical Memorials of Canterbury," chap. iv.
3 Felix locus, felix ecclesia.
In qua Thomae vivit memoria,
FeUx terra quE dedit praesulem,
FeUx ilia quK fovit exulem.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 351
Caen bearing the grim name of " Saint Thomas I'Abattu "
(the stricken down). His life was told in verse and
prose, in Latin, French, Icelandic, the most noteworthy
of those lives being that in French verse by Garnier de
Pont-Sainte-Maxence, as remarkable for its literary as
for its historical value, the author, a contemporary, having
taken as much pains to ascertain the truth as would the
most conscientious of the historians of to-day.' He had
begun writing two years after the event, and had
remodelled several times his poem because new documents,
of which several are versified into his text, or new facts
had come to his knowledge. He established himself at
" Chantorbire," where every man, every stone had been
a witness, and he appealed, in order to learn the truth,
to the friends, the servants, the sister of Saint Thomas.
His work was thereby delayed, but he preferred that :
A Chantorbire alai ; la verite oi ;
Des amis saint Thoma la verite cuilli,
Et de eels ki I'aveient des I'enfance servi,
D'oster et de remettre le travail en suffri.
Proud of the trouble he had taken, he was proud also of
the good French he spoke, far better, of course, than that
of ordinary Anglo-Norman writers : " My language is
good, for I was born in France." He thereupon submits
to the custom, not yet quite obsolete, of abusing those
who write on the same subject. Don't forget, he says
to his readers in the first lines of ,his poem, that " all
physicians are not good healers ; and it is not all clerks
who know how to well sing and well read. . . . Some
claim to be the best, and are in reality the worst." He,
however, claims to be the best ; and though his boast
may incline us to be the more critical, yet we must needs
grant that it is not groundless, considering his accuracy,
' ' ' " La vie de Saint Thomas le Martyr, par Garnier de Pont-Sainte-
Maxence, poete du XIP siecle," ed. C. Hippeau, Paris, 1859.

352 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
the excellence of his French, the lifelike vividness of his
scenes and dialogues, the interest of the views and senti
ments, at times very liberal, expressed by him : " God
loves the humble and the poor, who live by their work,
whose every day is a hard one . . . and who lead clean
lives ; God will exalt them."
To the mass of pilgrims who from the earliest moment
had begun to visit Canterbury, Garnier, " standing by
the tomb, a number of times read his sermon about Saint
Thomas the martyr and his passion. And they heard
nothing but truth absolute." '
Great and small, by land and by sea, from every part
of Christendom, " men of foreign countries, of a variety
of languages," says Garnier, flocked henceforth to the
place in such numbers, that the road, followed by pilgrims
from the West of England, or by foreigners from abroad,
landing at Southampton, to reach Canterbury by way of
Winchester, was, and is still, called " The Pilgrims' Way." ^
Kings and emperors came with the rest ; first of all,
the cause of the tragedy, Henry II, who, to avoid excommu
nication, after a first penance at Avranches, in the course
of which he had promised to go on a pilgrimage, at the
Pope's choice, to Rome, Jerusalem, or St. James's,
appeared for a severer test at the shrine of his dead enemy,
on July 12, 1 1 74. Walking the streets barefoot, dressed
in haircloth and a woollen shirt, looking a "mendif"
(beggar), having fasted for days on bread and water, the
bells in the minster tolling a funeral knell, he kissed the
I Epilogue, p. 205.
2 On which see, e.g. " The Old Road," by H. Belloc, London, 1904;
Sidney Heath, " Pilgrim Life in the Middle Ages," London, 191 1, chap.
viU. A characteristic decree of the Venetian Senate, sho A-ing the popularity
of this pilgrimage abroad, authorizes on Aug. 3, 1402, Lorenzo Cantarini,
captain of the Venetian galleys setting sail for Flanders, to visit St. Thomas's
shrine, in accomplishment of a vow, to go thither and return in one day while
the galleys would be at Sandwich, but not to sleep away from his vessel.
" Calendar of Venetian State papers relating to English Affairs," ed. Rawdon
Brown, RoUs series, 1864, I, 42.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 353
pavement of the cathedral at the place where Thomas
had fallen. Led, then, to the crypt, the proud Plantagenet,
the ruler of England and of half of France, conqueror of
Ireland, suzerain of Scotland, was flogged on his bare
shoulders by the prelates present, beginning with Gilbert
Foliot, Bishop of London :
Li evesques de Lundres tint el puing le balai."
Thus, " beaten and punished," he spent the night,
on the cold pavement, " in psalms and orisons," before
the tomb, and gave to the sister of the saint a mill, well
worth ten marks of revenue —
" Bien valt dis mars par an la rente qu'ele en a." '
Henry's rival and suzerain, the King of France, the
former crusader, brave, pious and inefficient Louis VII,
came shortly after ; a prodigious and unparalleled event,
the first time a king of France had ever set foot on British
soil. Feeling that for him death was near, and having
had, although three times married, only one son, he decided
in 1 179 to have the young prince crowned at once, but
before the ceremony, Philip, aged fourteen, while boar
hunting, lost his way in the forest of Compiegne, and,
separated from his companions, endured for days such
hardships before a charcoal-burner found him and led
him out of the maze that his life was despaired of. The
king, in his anguish, had at night a vision of St. Thomas
Becket, whom he had well known, promising life for his
son if he himself went to Canterbury as a pilgrim. Louis's
advisers recommended not to risk a journey which would
place him at the mercy of his enemy, the Plantagenet
king. But again, and yet again, St. Thomas appeared
at night, now threatening disaster. Louis started then
with a brilliant retinue, and no untoward event marred
the journey. Henry II, on the contrary, very meek
I Gamier, ibid. pp. 210 ff.
23

354 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
now when his former chancellor was in question, came
to meet the French monarch at Dover ; both went
together to Canterbury ; Louis remained two days in
prayer, and offered the monks a gold cup and a
magnificent gem shown henceforth to pilgrims as the
" regale of France." By a special charter he granted
them, besides, one hundred casks of wine to be taken
yearly for ever, at vintage time, from his cellars of
Poissy-sur-Seine. He returned to find his son on the way to recovery ;
and, having had him crowned, died within a year. The
son, one of whose first acts was to confirm his father's
hundred casks' charter, was that famous Philip August
whose victory at Bouvines, in 1214, settled the fate of
France and made it certain that she would be a great nation.'
It became henceforth a sort of tradition for British
kings to make this pilgrimage. Back from Palestine
and his Austrian prison, Richard Coeur-de-Lion went,
on his return, to Canterbury out of gratitude for his
recovered freedom. When king in his turn, his brother,
John, went too ; so did Henry III, Edward I, and nearly
all English monarchs ; so did the French king, John
the Good, when a prisoner in England ^ ; so did, in
' The original charter of Louis VII has disappeared, but the confirmation
by his son still exists. It reads : " Noverint igitur universi, presentes pariter
et futuri, quod intuitu beati martiris quondam Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi,
ad cujus tumulum pro salute anime et sanitate corporis impetranda, pater
noster in multa devotione fuerat profectus, conventui monachorum Sancte
Trinitatis ibidem Deo servientium centum modios vini, ad mensuram Pari-
siensem, singulis annis tempore vendemiarum, in castellaria Pissiaci accipiendos,
in elemosynam concessit . . . quod factum patris nostri ne aliqua possit
oblivione deleri et aliqua malignantium invidia violari, manu nostre con-
firmationis apposita, precipimus immutabUiter custodiri." Given at
Nantes, year 1 1 80. Text, facsim.Ue and comment in "Archaeologia Can
tiana," vol. IV, 1 861, p. 127.
" Muids " (modii) were of a different sort, according to places ; those
" of the Paris measurement " contained 270 of our litres and were therefore
quite goodly casks.
- Berners' Froissart, ed. Ker, I, p. 393.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 355
December 1400, Manuel II, Palseologus, emperor of
Constantinople' ; so did, in 14 16, Emperor Sigismund,
grandson of the blind King Jean de Luxembourg, who
had been killed at Crecy, himself then the dominant
figure in Europe, a quick-witted and, for the time, liberal-
minded sovereign, who, present one day in the Paris
Parliament, when justice was being rendered, and seeing
a plebeian about to lose his suit simply because he was
a plebeian, rose from his seat, and, to the wonder of the
assembly, touching him with his sword, made him a
knight. A remarkable man was that Canterbury pilgrim,
as a man as well as an emperor.
Accompanied by another emperor, Charles V, King
Henry VIII came too, but having changed his mind later
about a great many matters, he ordered every shrine
to be destroyed, showing especial vindictiveness towards
all that recalled Thomas Becket. If alive, he thought,
the archbishop would have probably been, just as the
recently beheaded More and Fisher, opposed to the new
dogma of the royal supremacy : most probably, indeed.
No mercy should therefore be shown to his bones and
to that shrine, where Henry must have seen in former
days a silver image of his own father bequeathed to be
placed as near the tomb as it could possibly be. The
monument was razed with particular care, and the long
venerated bones scattered. Having appointed himself
Head of the Church, Henry considered that he was free
to undo what another Head of the Church, a Pope of
long ago, had done, and, if it so pleased him, to un-canonize
a saint. While, therefore, allowing many other British
saints to remain on the calendar, he issued in 1539 " cer
tain injunctions," in which, after having informed his
•¦ On the extraordinary voyage of the " basileus and autocrator " and
his stay of four years away from his besieged capital, see Schlumberger,
" Un Empereur de Byzance a Paris et a Londres," " Revue des Deux
Mondes," Dec. 15, 191 5.

356 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
priests that if they continued to marry he would send
them to jail, he reviewed the life of Becket, showed to his
own satisfaction that he was no saint, but rather " a
rebel and a traitor to his prince," that " he gave oppro-
bious names to the gentlemen which then counselled him
to leave his stubornness," that a scuffle ensued with these
" gentlemen," and so " in the throng Becket was slain."
The King, therefore, commands English people to
cease calling the most famous of all the saints they had a
saint, " and that his images, and pictures, through the
whole realm ... be plucked down ... to the intent
his grace's loving subjects shall be no longer blindly
lead and abused to commit idolatry " ; if they persist,
they will go to jail, " at his grace's pleasure." ' In the
same way had they been recommended shortly before
not to call this one, or that one, of their loving sovereign's
daughters legitimate, so long as he himself chose to call
them bastards ; there was a gradation in the penalties,
and in the case of the daughters it was death.
Equally inimical dispositions were shown during
the next reign by Archbishop Cranmer towards his
predecessor, and one of the articles of his " Visitation
to be had within the diocese of Canterbury " had for its
object to ascertain " whether they have put out of their
church books this word Papa and the name and service
of Thomas Becket." ^
Times had changed. But,
" Whan that Aprille, with his showres swoote,"
had long before, in the year 1388, caused spring flowers

' Wilkins, " Concilia Magna Britannis," vol. iii, 1737, p. 847. On
the discovery in 1888 of bones supposed to be those of the archbishop, see
Canon A. J. Mason's " What became of the Bones of St. Thomas 1 A con
tribution to his fifteenth Jubilee," London, 1920.
2 2 Ed. Yl, " Miscellaneous Writings of Tliomas Cranmer," Parker
Society, Cambridge, 1846, p. 147,

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 357
to bloom, matters were different, and, as all know who
can read EngHsh,
" from every schires end
Of England, to Canterbury they wende.
The holy blissful martir for to seeke.
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke."

Ill
In those holy journeys, as in Chaucer's book, all
ranks of society were mingled together. The majority
of these pilgrims were sincere and in good faith ; they
had made a vow and came to fulfil it. With such dis
positions, the knight who found a pilgrim like himself
upon the road would not be inclined to keep haughtily
aloof ; besides, if the distances were great between clasj
and class at this period, familiarity was still greater. The
distance has indeed diminished at the present day, and
familiarity also, as though in compensation. The noble
felt himself sufficiently raised above the common people
not to be afraid of using a kind of jovial intimacy with
them on occasion ; at the present time, when superiority
of rank is of less importance, many are more attentive
and take care not to overstep a limit which is not now so
patent as before.
Arrived at the end of the journey, all prayed ; prayed
with fervour in the humblest posture. The soul was
filled with religious emotion when from the end of the
majestic alley formed by the great pillars of the church,
through the coloured twilight of the* nave, the heart
divined, rather than the eye saw, the mysterious object
of veneration for which such a distance had been traversed
at the cost of such fatigue. Though the practical man
galloping up to bargain with the saint for the favour of
God, though the emissary sent to make offering in the
name of his master might keep a dry and clear eye, tears

358 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
coursed down the cheeks of the poor and simple in heart ;
he tasted fully of the pious emotion he had come to seek,
the peace of heaven descended into his bosom, and he
went away consoled.
Such was the happy lot of humble devout souls. Pil
grims, however, were undoubtedly a very mixed race ;
no reader of Chaucer needs to be reminded that the talk
on the way was not limited to edifying subjects, and
that pilgrims themselves, even allowing the greater number
to have been sincere, were not all of them vessels of
election. Some went like gypsies to a fair and tried to
gather money by begging ; some went for the pleasures
of the journey and the merriments of the road ; so that
reformers and satirists, paying more attention to the
abuse than to the less visible good that came along with
it, began to raise a cry which grew louder and louder
until, at the time of the Reformation, it was something
like a storm. Whom did Langland see on Palmers'
way, near Walsingham ? Those same false hermits we
have already met by the highroads and at the corner of
bridges, and in what objectionable company !
" Eremytes on an hep ¦ with hokede staves,
Wenten to Walsyngham- and hure (their) wenches after:
Grete lobies and longe- that loth were to swynke,
Clothede hem in copis ¦ to be knowe fro othere.
And made hem-selve eremytes • hure else to have." '
Wyclif denounced pilgrimages most persistently, so
much so that, when later some of his followers had to
renounce their heresies, belief in the usefulness and sanctity
of pilgrimages was one of the articles they had to subscribe.
Thus, in his vow of abjuration, the Lollard William
Dynet of Nottingham, on December i, 1395, swears in
these words : " Fro this day forth warde I shall worshipe
ymages, with praying and offering unto hem, in the
I "Piers Plowman," ed. Skeat, Text C, pass, i, 1. 51.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 359
worschepe of the seintes that they be made after ; and
also I shal nevermore despyse pylgremage." '
But other Lollards refused to recant. Questioned
by Archbishop Arundel the irreconcilable enemy of his
sect, William Thorpe confesses in 1407 having preached
against that passion " to seek and visit the bones or images
... of this saint and of that," so uncontrollable that,
" ofttimes divers men and women of these runners thus
madly hither and thither into pilgrimage, borrow hereto
other men's goods (yea, and sometimes they steal men's
goods hereto), and they pay them never again." ^
For " divers men and women " those journeys being
chiefly pleasure trips, nothing, Thorpe continues, is forgotten
that may make them more pleasurable, " and finding out one
pilgrimage, they will ordain beforehand to have with them
both men and women that can well sing wanton songs ; and
some other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes : so
that every town they come through, what with the noise
of their singing, and with the sound of their piping, and
with the jangling of their Canterbury bells, and with the
barking out of dogs after them, they make more noise
than if the king came there away, with all his clarions
and many other minstrels."
Chaucer's pilgrims had not, perhaps, quite so magnifi
cent a record, and when they crossed Dartford or Rochester
did not outnoise the king himself ; they had, in any case,
no women singers ; but their miller was provided with
a sonorous bagpipe :
" A baggepype wel coude he blowe and sowne.
And ther-with-al he broghte us out of towne."
Their monk's bridle was heard jingling " as loude as
' Printed in "The Academy," Nov. 17, 1883, p. 331.
2 " The Examination of Master WilUam Thorpe," 1407, Arber's
'¦ Engl. Garner," vi, 84. Cf. " Anecdotes . . . tirees . . . d'Etienne de
Bourbon, XIIP siecle," ed. Lecoy de la Marche, " Sextus titulus, De
Peregrinatione."

36o ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
dooth the chapel-belle " ; they talked boisterously, wrangled,
and made merry, " For trewely, confort ne mirthe is noon
To ryde by the weye doumb as a stoon,"
and dogs, of course, did not remain " doumb " for them
any more than for the king.
One more objection of Thorpe's to those journeys
was that, " if these men and women be a month out in
their pilgrimage, many of them shall be, a half-year after,
great janglers, tale-tellers, and liars." Chaucer's pilgrims
were certainly, in their way, and no one nowadays objects,
great " tale-tellers."
Archbishop Arundel, who seems at times to be the
one interrogated (but we must not forget that we have
only Thorpe's version, unrevised by the other party),
makes a more picturesque than telling answer : " Lewd
losell I thou seest not far enough in this matter ! for
thou considerest not the great travail of pilgrims. . . .
I say to thee that it is right well done, that pilgrims have
with them both singers and also pipers : that when one
of them that goeth barefoot striketh his toe upon a stone,
and hurteth him sore and maketh him to bleed, it is well
done that he or his fellow begin then a song or else take
out of his bosom a bagpipe to drive away with such mirth
the hurt of his fellow."
Lay writers of a reforming mind objected to pilgrim
ages, not so much on account of the worship of images,
but because they thought these travels an encouragement
to laziness and idle Uving. We know the opinion of
Langland. The same views are expressed by an author
of a quite different turn of mind, the one who wrote the
" Roman de Renart," and who has a special chapter to inform
us "of the pilgrimage of Reynard and how he went to
Rome." Reynard cannot but consider that he has greatly

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 361
and many a time sinned, and feeling some anxiety about
his misdeeds, goes to a hermit and confesses himself.
Such are the faults he has to declare that the holy man
does not dare absolve him, but advises him to go to Ro.rae
and ask the absolution of the Pope. Reynard accordingly
" takes his scrip and burdon [that is, his wallet and staff,
as did all pilgrims], and begins to move on, and takes
his way ; he looks quite like a pilgrim, his scrip fits his
neck beautifully." But travelling alone is not pleasant ;
he meets Belin the Sheep, and persuades him to come
with him, and a little farther " Bernart the arch-priest,"
a donkey, who was eating thistles in a ditch ; he also
secures this new companion.
As night is coming, the three, finding themselves near
the house of Primaut the Wolf, enter without ceremony
and make themselves at home, while the owner of the
place is away. They find there " salted meat, cheese,
and eggs . . . and good ale. Belin drinks so much
that he loses his head, and then begins to sing, and the
arch-priest to organ-bray, and Master Reynard sings in
falsetto." But their merriment is soon at an end. The
alarm has been given ; Ysengrin, Hersent, and a number
of other wolves, relations, friends, compeers of Primaut,
who all of them owe grudges to Reynard, come round
and besiege the pilgrims. They escape with great
difficulty. Ill-pleased with these grievous adventures,
they agree not to go to Rome at all, and Reynard, to
whom, rather against likelihood, the author here lends
his own thoughts, winds up the enterprise with a speech :
" ' My lords,' says he, ' by my head,, this wandering is
loathsome and tiring. There is in the world many a
good man that has never been to Rome ; such an one
has come back from the Seven Saints who is worse than
he ever was. I mean to take my way home, and I shall
live by my labour and seek honest earnings ; I shall be
charitable to poor people.' Then they cried, ' Be it so.

362 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
be it so,' and they betook themselves homewards," converts
to better lives, for a time.'
The same mode of reasoning was used later on, at the
time of the Renaissance, by no less a man than Erasmus,
who has described in his most satirical vein the vanities
of pilgrims and pilgrimages. He supposes a meeting
of two friends, Menedemus and Ogygyus, the latter just
back from Compostela, and, what is more interesting
for us, from Walsingham, " the most holy name in all
England. . . . The towne is almost susteynyd by the
resort of pylgrymes." The faithful believer Ogygyus
goes on describing the wonders of the place, the gold and
silver and precious stones offered to the miraculous statue
of our Lady, the marvels worked at the holy wells, the
miracle of the knight towards whom the portal of the
church stretched out, the beautiful relics, and especially
the crystal phial containing the Virgin's milk. " Whan
ye sexten sawe us, he dyd runne to the aultre, and put
apon hym his surplese and his stole about his nekke,
knelyd downe relygyously and worshipyd it, and streght-
forthe dyd offre the mylke to us to kysse." The same
ceremony with surplice and kneeling, though it has dis
appeared at Walsingham with the phial itself, may still
be seen elsewhere any day, in Milan, for example, at the
tomb of San Carlo Borromeo.
Ogygyu^s 3-"d. his friends make their offerings, not
without remarking that some unscrupulous visitors, by
a clever trick, pick money out of the plate instead of
leaving in it any of their own : a trick which, as we
have seen, was used by Panurge on a certain day when
he was somewhat " escorne et taciturne " for lack of
pence. Erasmus ends his dialogue in the same strain as the
author of " Reynard ":
' See Appendix XVII, p. 446. On Reynard, the date, composition and
sources of this work, see Leon Foulet, " Le Roman de Renard," Paris, 19 14.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 363
" I have enough to do," says sceptical Menedemus,
" with my statyons of Rome.
" Ogysy^^- Of Rome, that dyd never see Rome .?
" Menedemus. I wyll tell you, thus I go my statyons
at home. I go in to the parler, and I se unto the chast
lyvynge of my doughters ; agayne frome thense I go
in to my shope, I beholde what my servauntes, bothe
men and women, be doynge. From thense into the
kytchyn, lokynge abowt, if ther nede any of my cownsell ;
frome thense hyther and thyther, observynge howe my
chylderne be occupyed, what my wyffe dothe, beynge
carefull that every thynge be in ordre : these be statyons
of Rome. Ogygyus. But these thynges saynt James wold dow
for yow.
" Menedemus. That I shuld se unto these thynges
holy Scripture commaundethe ; that I shuld commyt
the charge to sayntes I dyd rede yt never commaunded." '
Thus far Menedemus, whose task in life seems to
have consisted in seeing to it that others fulfilled theirs.
The friend of Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, took the
opposite view, and wrote a dialogue in defence of images,
relics, and pilgrimages, but in vain.= The time of the
Reformation had come ; doubt was becoming general,
and from peasant to baron all the people assimilated
arguments like those of Latimer :
" What thinke ye of these images that are had more
then their felowes in reputation .'' that are gone unto
with such labour and werines of the body, frequented
' " A Dialoge or communication of two persons, deuysyd and set forthe
in the laten tonge, by the noble and famose clarke, Desiderius Erasmus,
intituled ye pylgremage of pure deuotyon. Newly translatyd into Englishe."
London (1540 .?), i6°-
2 " A Dyaloge of syr Thomas More knyghte . . . wherin be treatyd
dyuers maters, as of the veneration and worshyp of ymagys and relyques,
praying to sayntys, and goyng on pylgrymage, wyth many othere thyngys
touchyng the pestylent sect of Luther and Tyndale." London, 1529, 4°

364 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
with such our cost, sought out and visited with such-
confidence ? what say ye by these images, that are so
famous, so noble, so noted, beying of them so many and
so divers in England. Do you thinke that this preferryng
of picture to picture, image to image is the right use,
and not rather the abuse of images .? " '
These times were yet to be. In the Middle Ages
pilgrims came to offer their prayers, and also money,
each one according to his means. When the king, in
his perpetual goings and comings, turned aside to visit
a revered shrine, he usually gave seven shillings, as shown
by the ordinances of Edward II for his household.^
Before going away the pilgrims, who had admired,
besides the shrine and its jewels, the stained glass of the
church, the monumental curiosities of the place and some
times its fortifications, 3 bought, just as now, medals or
signs as remembrances of their journey.4 The author
of the supplement to the " Canterbury Tales" at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, shows the pilgrims
purchasing in the town various sorts of sygnys or brochis, so
' " The sermon . . . made ... to the conuocation of the clergy "
(28 Henry VIII), in " FrutefvU sermons preached by the right reverend
father and constant martyr of Jesus Christ, M. Hugh Latymer." London,
1571, p-. 10.
' Ordinance for the state of the wardrobe and the account of the house
hold, June, 1323. " King Edward II's Household and Wardrobe Ordin
ances," ed. FurnivaU, Chaucer Society, 1S76, p. 62.
3 In the continuation of Chaucer's tales, the Knight is represented inter
preting to his son the strong and weak points in the continuous wall at Canter
bury, and discussing whether it was proof against gunshot :
" And a-poyntid to his sone the perell and the dout,
Ffor shot of arbalast and of bowe, and eke for shot of gonne."
" The Tale of Beryn," ed. FurnivaU and Stone, E.E.T.S., 1909, p. 9.
4 C. Roach Smith has described a number of them in his " Collectanea
Antiqua," London, 1848, vol. i. p. 81, and vol. ii. p. 43. He has given
drawings of many which had been " discovered chiefly in the bed of the
Thames, and in making the approaches to new London Bridge." See also
"Guide to mediaeval room, British Museum," 1907, p. 69; Heath,
" Pilgrim Life," 1911, ch. VI. A spximen is gi,'en below, p. 4i3.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 365
that people who saw them might know where they had
been :

" Thtn, as manere and custom is, signer there they boughte,
I for men of contre shulde know whcm they hadde [sjought^." '
They were of lead or pewter, and perforated to be more
easily sewn on the breast or cap, like those sold at the
present day at St. Anne d'Auray in Brittany, but larger.
At Canterbury they represented St. Thomas, or were in
the shape of an ampulla or tiny flask, containing water
from the miraculous well ; at St. James's they represented
shells ; at Amiens the head of St. John the Baptist :
" Ecce signum faciei beati Johannis Baptistc " ; at Rome
the holy sudary, called the vernicle ; ^ at Rocamadour
the Holy Virgin. 3 The right of selling these signs was
a source of profit, and it sometimes belonged exclusively
to a convent or to a private family. At Rocamadour this
' " Tale of Beryn," ibid. p. 7.
2 Among the ornaments worn by Chaucer's pardoner was a " vernicle "
on his cap, as may be seen above in the plate, p. 336. Sir Thomas More,
in his " Dialogue," describes as follows the vernicle represented on pilgrims'
medals : How, says he, can it be maintained that Christ bla.mes im.ages,
" where he lykyd to leve the holy vernacje, thexpresse ym^age also of hys
blessid vysage, as a token to remain in honour among such as lovyd hym
from ye tyme of hys bytter passyon hytherto, whych as it was by the myracle
of hys blessid holy hand expressed and lefte in ye sudari : so hath yt bene
by lyke myracle in that thyn corruptyble cloth kepte and preservyd uncor-
rupted thys xv. C. yere freshe and well perceyved, to ye inwarde cumforte,
spyrytuall reioysyng and grete encreace of fervoure and devocyon in the harts
of good crysten people " (Sig. B. iii.).
3 Most of them mentioned by Gamier in his " Vie de Saint Thomas,"
where, after stating that men of all sorts flocked. to Canterbury, he adds
(ed. Hippeau, p. 205) :
" Et anpules raportent en signe del veiage,
Mes de Jerusalem en est la croix portee,
Et de Rochemadur Marie en plum getee,
De Saint Jame la scale, qui en plun est muee ;
Or a Deus saint Thomas cele ampule donee.
Qui est par tut le m.und cherie et honoree."

366 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
right had been conceded in return, it seems, for military
services, to the De Valon family, lords of Thegra.' They
and the Bishop of Tulle appointed a deputy to superintend
the sale, and the product was divided by halves between
them and the bishop. Such were the benefits derived
from these sales that clandestine manufactories of pewter
medals were established by the inhabitants, who sold
numbers of them, to the great detriment of the authorized
shop and in defiance of ever-recurring prohibitions. Once,
however, in 1425, free sale was allowed to all the people of
the place ; the country had been reduced to such poverty
that the bishop renounced his privilege for two years, out of
charity and for the benefit of his flock.
Pilgrims when going home were careful to wear
prominently sewn on their garments these testimonials of
their holy travels. In the above-quoted dialogue of
Erasmus, the sceptical Menedemus wonders at the appear
ance of his friend : " I pray you, what araye is this that you
be in ; me thynke that you be clothyd with cockle scbelles,
and be laden on every side with bruches of lead and tynne.
And you be pretely garnyshed with wrethes of strawe, and
your arme is full of snakes eggs," thus uncivilly designating
the beads of his cbaplet. The French king Louis XI, of
grim memory, was never without some such pewter medals
and brooches, and wore them on his hat. " And truly,"
writes his contemporary, Claude de Seyssel, " his devotion
seemed more superstitious than religious. For to whatever
image or church of God and the saints or of Our Lady that
he heard the people were devoted, or where miracles were
worked, he went there to make offerings, or sent a man
there expressly. He had, besides, his hat quite full of
images, mostly of lead or pewter, which he kissed on all
occasions when any good or bad news arrived, or that his
fancy prompted him ; casting himself upon his knees so
' " Guide du pelerin a Rocamadour," by M. le Chanoine Laporte,
Rocamadour, 1862, chap. viii.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 367
suddenly at times, in whatever place he might be, that he
seemed more like one wounded in his understanding
than a rational man." '
Professional pilgrims outshone in this respect all the
others. For, beside the occasional pilgrim who came to
make an offering to such or such a shrine in accomplish
ment of a vow and afterwards returned to take up again
the course of his ordinary life, there was the pilgrim by
calling or by penance (for such a life-long penance was
sometimes inflicted), whose whole existence was spent
travelling from one sanctuary to another, always on the
road, and always begging. With the professional
pardoner, the professional palmer, back from many coun
tries, adorned with many tokens, the witness of many
wonders, the hero of many adventures, was the most
curious type of the religious wayfaring race, with hardly
any equivalent in our days. Like the pardoner and the
friar, the palmer could not but have a great experience
of men and things ; he had seen much, and he invented
more. He too had to edify the multitude to whom he
held out his hand for alms, and the fine stories, in which
he rarely missed giving himself a part to play, were his
livelihood ; failing this, his daily bread failed too. By
dint of repeating his tales, he came to almost believing
them, then quite ; and his voice henceforth took that
accent of certitude which alone begets conviction in
audiences. Besides, he came from so far that he might
indeed have seen marvels ; around us, of course, life flows
on without prodigies, almost without events in its flat
monotony ; but it is common knowledge that in distant
parts things are quite different. And the best proof is
that none of those who have undertaken the journey
comes back disappointed, quite the contrary ; the
' " Les louenges du roy Louys xij<^. de ce nom, nouvellement com-
posees par maistre Claude de Seyssel, docteur en tous droits." Paris, 1 508,
sign. f. iii.

368 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
pleasure of believing them is moreover innocent enough,
why should we deprive ourselves of an enjoyment
exhilarating for the mind and good for the soul ?
Clever people, poets, men of the world, deprived
themselves of this pleasure, and made up for the loss by
laughing at pilgrims and story-telling travellers. So did
Chaucer, as we ha.ve already seen, who held up to ridicule
in his "House of Fame," shipmen and pilgrims, with their
bags " brimful of lies." To the same effect but in graver
mood, Langland wrote in his " Visions " :
" Pylgrimis and palmers • plyghten hem to-gederes.
To seche saint lame " and seyntys of rome,
Wenten forth in hure (their) way ¦ with meny un-wyse tales.
And haven leve to lye • al hure lyf-tyme." '
The crowd felt otherwise ; they listened, laughed per
haps sometimes, but more often recollected themselves
and remained attentive. The pilgrim was so interesting !
he was a play in himself, a living story, he had on his feet
the dust of Rome and of Jerusalem, and brought news
of the " worshippers " of Mahomet. He was a picture
too, with his bag hung at his side, not for lies, but for
provisions, and his staff, at the top of which was a knob
and sometimes a piece of metal with an appropriate motto
like the device on a bronze ring found at Hitchin, a cross
with these words, " Hsc in tute dirigat iter" ("May
this safely guide thee on thy way ").^ The staff had at the
other end an iron point, like an alpenstock of the
I Skeat's edition. Text C, pass. i. 1. 47.
« See the drawing of this ring in vol. viii. of the " Archaeological Journal,"
p. 360. The long stick, or pilgrim's staff, and the bag or " scrip " were the
characteristic signs of pUgrims. In the romance of King Horn, the hero
meets on his road a palmer, and to disguise himself changes clothes with him ;
in this transformation the author only points out the chief particulars, that is
to say, the staff and the bag. " Florn took burdon and scrippe." (" King
Horn, with fragments of Floris and Blauncheflur," ed. by J. H. Lumby,
Early English Text Society, 1866.) We have seen above, p. 362, that
Reynard on his way to Rome took just the same implements.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES

369

pfesent day ; as may be seen in numerous drawings in
mediaeval manuscripts.
The whole race of wanderers was, however, as we
know, looked at askance by the king's officers ; these
goings and comings disquieted the sheriff. We have
already met labourers who, weary of their lord, left him
under pretext of distant pilgrimages, and laid down
without scruple the pilgrim's staff at the door of a new
master who would pay them better. False pilgrims were
not less numerous than false pardoners and false hermits ;

AN ENGLISH PILGRIM.
[From the MS. 17 C. xxxviii.)
they were condemned to repose, under pain of imprison
ment, by the same statutes as the beggars and wandering
workmen. Henceforward, orders Richard II in 1388,
they too must have permits with a special seal affixed by
certain worthy men.' Those without a permit should
be forthwith arrested, unless infirm and incapable of
work, for their good faith is then evident, and it is not
for the love of vagabondage that they painfully go and
visit " optimum segrorum medicum," Saint Thomas. Even
greater severity was shown when it was a matter of
' Statute 12 Rich. II, cap 7.
24

370 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
crossing the sea ; would-be pilgrims must be furnished
with regular passports ; and the law applied to " all manner
of people, as well clerks as other," under pain of confisca
tion of all their goods. The exceptions made by the
king show besides that it is wanderers of doubtful status
and motives whom he has in view, for there are dispensa
tions for the " lords and other great persons of the realm,"
for the " true and notable merchants," and lastly, for the
" king's soldiers." '
This passport or " licence," this " special leave of
the king," could only be available at certain ports, namely,
London, Sandwich, Dover, Southampton, Plymouth,
Dartmouth, Bristol, Yarmouth, Boston, Kingston-upon-
Hull, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the poMs of the coast
facing Ireland. Heavy penalties were laid on all port
wardens, inspectors, ship captains, etc., who were neglect
ful, or so bold as to show favour to roamers. In the year
1389, the king restrained pilgrims from embarking any
where else than at Dover or Plymouth. To put to sea
elsewhere, an "especial licence from the king himself"
was necessary.^ A number of such licences, as will be
seen further, are still in existence.

IV
But the attraction of distant pilgrimages was great,3
especially the three without equal : Rome, Jerusalem,
and St. James's of Galicia, held so sacred that, while most
' Statute 5 Rich. II, st. i, c. 2. Restrictions on pilgrimage-making
existed also in France. See an ordinance of Charles VI, February 27, 1399,
prohibiting pUgrimages to Rome. " RecueU d'Isambert," vol. vi. p. 843.
» " Rolls of Parliament," 13 Rich. II, vol. iU. p. 275, and statute i,cap.
zo of 13 Rich. II.
3 As to the number of pilgrimages, their origin, and history, see the
" Dictionnaire g^ographique, historique, descriptif, archeologique des
pelerinages anciens et modemes," by L. de Sivry and M. de Champagnac,
Paris, 1850, 2 vols. Svo, forming vols. xUU. and xliv. of Migne's " Ency
clopedic theologique."

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 371
of the vows taken by the benefactors of the great bridge
at Avignon could be remitted on account of their gifts
to this useful structure, exception was made if the question
was of a pilgrimage to be performed to one of those three
places.' With or without letters men crossed the Channel,
for which they paid sixpence, or if they had a horse, two
shillings. 2 They arrived at Calais, stopping there some
time in a " Maison-Dieu," or hospital, which had been
built and endowed by pious souls wit.h revenues " for
the sustenance of the pilgrims and other poor folks
repairing to the said town to rest and refresh them." 3
Setting out again, they went to Boulogne to pray to a
miraculous virgin, whose hand still exists enclosed in a
reliquary. The statue itself was thrown into a well by
the PrcJtestants in 1567, replaced on the altar in 1630,
pulled down again at the Revolution and burnt, but
one of the faithful saved the hand, which the church of
Notre Dame preserves to this day. Chaucer's travelled
gossip, the Wife of Bath, had among other pilgrimages,
made this one to Boulogne.4 People also went to Amiens
to venerate the head, or rather one of the heads, of St.
John the Baptist.5 Great was their wonder when, con-
' Ripert-Monclar, "BuUaire du Pont d'Avignon," 191 2.
= Statute 4 Ed. Ill, c. 8.
3 Petition of the Calais burgesses, " RoUs of Parliament," vol. iii. p. 500,
4 Henry IV, a.d. 1402. In Dover too, on the opposite shore, there was
such a house, the inventory of which has been printed : Walcott, " Inven
tories of St. Mary's Hospital or Maison-Dieu, Dover," London, 1869.
In the diary of his travels, during the sixteenth century, the Greek Nicander
Nucius observes that the town of Dover seemed to be made almost entirely
of inns and hotels. " The Travels of Nicander Nucius of Corcyra,"
Camden Society, 1841.
4 See Prof J. W. Hales' letter to The Academy of April 22, 1882,
p. 287. A view of the old church, of which very little now remains, could
be seen, Mr. Enlart writes me, in a picture by Van der Meulen, but it
was destroyed by the Germans in one of their air raids during the late Great
War, when they sheUed the Museum.
5 This relic so greatly, attracted the English that they had founded in
the cathedral a chapel of" Notre Dame Englesque " (Sancta Maria Anglica),

372 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
tinuing their journey, they fell in with another at Con
stantinople. Perhaps, let us hope, they were content with
remarking as " Mandeville " does : Which is the true
one ? "I wot nere, but God knowethe ; but in what
wyse than men worschipen it, the blessed seynt John holt
him a-payd." ' Then also people went to the shrine of
the three kings at Cologne, to Paris where innumerable
relics were kept, to Chartres, where, besides a famous statue
of the Virgin, was shown the tunic she wore on the day of
the Annunciation (preserved in the cathedral since 86i),=
to Vezelay, Tours, Le Puy, and to many other places in
France, among which the celebrated and to the present day
most frequented church of Our Lady of Rocamadour in
Guyenne. The fame of this pilgrimage among English
men is attested by Langland, when he advises people
belonging to the religious orders to cease pilgrimage-
making, and rather practice virtue at home :
" Right- so, if thow be religious- renne thou never ferther
To Rome ne to Rochemadore." 3
It was a shrine of great renown. Roland, according
to a legend, went there before starting for the ill-fated
expedition in which he met his death, and a large piece
of rusted iron is still shown in the old church as part of
the famous Durandal. Henry II of England came there,
too, as a pilgrim, as did many other illustrious travellers,
Simon de Montfort among them. 4 The place was forti
fied ; it had a part to play in the Hundred Years' War,
and the leopards of England, writes Prof Enlart, are still to be seen in the
stained glass.
' HaUiwell's edition, i866, p. io8.
« See the remarkable articles by Emile Male, on " L'Art du Moyen
Age et les Pelerinages," in the " Revue de Paris," 1920 ; in the number of
Feb. I c, an article on " Les Routes de France et d'Espagne."
3 Text B, p. xii. 1. 37.
4 A. B. Caillau, " Histoire critique ct rcligieuse de Notie Dam.e de Rcc-
Amadour," Paris, 1834, pp. 73 ff.

4

FORTIFIED ENTRANCE TO THE SANCTUARIES OF ROCAMADOUR. iP- 371-
[Restored.)

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 375
and Froissart has told us " howe Sir Robert Carrol and
Sir John Chandos . . . toke Guaches, Rochemador, and
diuers other townes, the which wer newly turned frenche." '
Then there were Spanish pilgrimages, and especially
the world-famous one at Compostela, where English
travellers went in large numbers, most of them direct
by sea, though some preferred the lengthy, picturesque
land road, dotted with famous shrines good for the soul,
and where all sorts of adventures might be expected. =
Licences authorizing the owners and the captain of such or
such a ship to carry to St. James's a fixed number of pil
grims fill pages in Rymer's " Fcedera." They were granted
pursuant to the before-mentioned statute of Richard II,
and are all drawn after one or two models, the text in
Latin, with the name of the ship in French, like the one
here translated, of the year 1394 :
" The king, to all and each of his Admirals, etc.,
greeting. " Know you that we have given licence to Oto Chamber-
noun, William Gilbert, and Richard Gilbert, to receive
and embark in the harbour of Dartmouth a hundred
pilgrims in a certain ship belonging to the same Oto,
William, and Richard, called la Charite de Paynton, of
which Peter Cok is captain ; and to take them to Saint
James's, there to fulfil their vows, and from thence to
bring them back to England, freely and without hin
drance, notwithstanding any ordinances to the contrary." 3

' Berners' Froissart, vol. i. ch. cclviii.
' WUUam Wey, in the fifteenth century, notices the large number of
English ships at " Grwne " (Coruna), the usual port of landing for Compos
tela : " In porto Grwne erant de Anglicis, Wallicis, Hibemicis, Normannis,
Francis, Britonnibus et aliis LXXX*^ naves cum topcastellis et quatuor
sine topcastellis ; numerus navium Anglicarum erat XXX'J." He notes the
words and music of a song sung by little Spanish boys, dancing before pUgrims
and offering good wishes, in exchange for which they hoped to get some
small coin. " Itineraries," Roxburghe Club, 1857, pp. 154, 156
3 " Foedera," ed. 1704, vol. vU. p. 468, 17 Rich. II.

376 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
A few provisos are added, the keeping of which the
pilgrims should swear to before leaving England ; they
must upon their oath bind themselves to do nothing
contrary to the obedience and fealty they owe the king ;
they must not take out of the realm gold or silver in money
or bullion beyond what is necessary to their journey,
and they must not, it is sometimes added, reveal the secrets
of the kingdom.
During the following century these, licences became
innumerable, or maybe they have been preserved in
larger numbers. They show that, in fact, fleets loaded
with English pilgrims plied towards St. James's. We
find that " Le Petre de Darthmouth " is allowed to carry
sixty pilgrims ; "La Marie de Southampton," a hundred ;
" La Sainte Marie de Blakney," sixty ; " Le Garlond
de Crowemere," sixty ; " La Trinite de Wells," forty ;
" Le Thomas de Saltash," sixty ; and so on. Numbers
usually vary from thirty to one hundred.'
It must not be thought that these ships, carrying as
much as a hundred passengers besides their crew on this
rather long journey, were great, well-appointed vessels.
They very much resembled the pilgrim-ships of the present
day, which carry every year to Jeddah, on the Red Sea,
crowds of Arabs on their way to Mecca. The travellers
were huddled together in most uncomfortable fashion,
and had ample opportunities to do penance and offer
their sufferings to the saint. This is no surmise, for
one of those English pilgrims duly allowed to go to
Galicia, provided they did not reveal the secrets of the
realm, has rimed an account of his experiences, so we
know what they were. Do not think of laughing, says he,
when you go by sea to St. James's ; there is sea-sickness ;
the sailors push you about under pretext that you hinder
the working of the ship ; the smell is not pleasant :
' " Fredera," 12 Hen. VI, 1434, vol. x. pp. 567-569.

t *-

^

.^

BSwTMr-aS/lMWMMI^^

*«»f4 th^h% UlVf XHdnWt I An%g&

^M»ki<[ -^^-'

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'ic 8< pM^ t«nsp^ «wl.'5W' 4^-i i'>d «, .4f-^

^ .

TRAVELLING BY SEA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
[From the MS. Harl. 1319.)

["¦ 3?7.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 379
" Men may leve alle gamys
That saylen to Seynt Jamys !
Ffor many a man hit gramys (vexes)
When they begin to sayle.
Ffor when they have take the see.
At Sandwych or at Wynchylsee,
At Bristow, or where that hit bee,
Theyr hertes begyn to fayle."
The mocking remarks of the seamen are painful to bear.
Says the captain :
" Some ar lyke to cowgh and grone
Or hit be fuU mydnyght ; "
and then turning to his men :
" ' Hale the bowelyne ! now, vere the shete !
Cooke, make redy anoon our mete.
Our pylgryms have no lust to ete,
I pray God yeve hem rest ! '
' Go to the helm ! what, howe ! no nere ?
Steward, felow ! A pot of bere ! ' —
' Ye shalle have sir, with good chere.
Anon aUe of the best.' "
Sick pilgrims could not eat, and were jeered at, they
found the time long ; some, with a book on their knees,
tried to read, but then they felt as if their head would
burst : " Som layde theyr bookys on theyr kne.
And rad so long they myght nat se ; —
' Alias ! myne hede wolle cleve on thre ! ' "
When at their worst, comes a facetious sailor to bawl
out in their ears : Cheer up, in a moment we shall be
in a storm 1

380 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
" Then cometh oone and seyth : ' Be mery ;
Ye shaU have a storme or a pery ' (a squaU)

Thys mene whyle the pylgryms ly
And have theyr bowlys (basins) fast theym by.
And cry after hot malvesy."
In short, they were very unhappy, and as the narrator
said at first, little inclined to games and laughter.'
Votive offerings plentifully adorned venerated sanc
tuaries ; if, by striking a wax statuette while making
appropriate incantations an enemy might do you great
harm, on the other hand, by placing your image in the
chapel of a saint, great favours might be gained for
you, especially in cases of sickness.- Thus were to
be seen prisoners' irons, warriors' swords, cripples' crutches,
jewels and precious stones, sculpted or painted images
representing devotees or actual miracles performed for
them, tablets and offerings of all sorts. 3 At Rocamadour
tresses of women's hair were shown as a threat as well as
an admonition. " They were," relates the knight of
La Tour Landry, those of " ladies and gentille women
that had be[en] wasshe in wyne, and in other thinges for
to make the here of colour otherwise thanne God made
' " The Stacions of Rome and the Pilgrim's Sea Voyage," ed. FurnivaU,
Early English Text Society, 1 867, p. 47. This complaint on the Compostela
pilgrimage is of the fifteenth century. On the Compostela sanctuary and
on the propagation of certain artistic notions through the influx of pilgrims,
see the before quoted article by E. Male, " Revue de Paris," Feb. 1920.
2 "The Paston Letters," ed. Jas. Gairdner, vol. i. p. 48. Letter of
Margaret Paston of September 28, 1443.
3 Especially noteworthy in this respect at the present day is the Church
of Santa Maria delle Grazie, near Mantua (in which the famous author
of the " Cortegiano," Baldassare CastigUone, is buried), where Ufe-size,
realistic wax figures, wearing real garments or armour, form a continuous series
above the arches on both sides of the nave. Each scene commemorates
a miraculous intervention of the Virgin : innocents saved at the moment of
their execution, the halter breaking, the axe stopped, etc. The " custode
also directs attention to a stuffed animal, dangling from the roof, and which
he describes as a " crocodilo " which used to desolate the country.

THE SOUTHERN ENTRANCE TO SAINT JAMES OF COMPOSTELA.
Twelfth Century. IP- 381.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 383
it, the whiche ladies and gentille women that aught
(owned) the tresses were comynge thedirward on pilgrimage,
but they may never have powere to come withinne the
chirche dore unto the tyme that thei hadde cutte of the
tresses of her here," ' which, says he, were still there in
his day.
Another story to the same effect is told by Mielot,
who reports how a very fair lady, who had led an ill life,
lost her sight as a punishment, through the will of Heaven.
She went on a pilgrimage to Rocamadour, prayed to the
Virgin, and was healed, but could not, however, enter the
sanctuaries. She then confessed on the spot to a priest,
who, " looking at her fair face," said : " Dear friend, I
well know that with these fair tresses of your hair you
have done great hurt to those to whom you have shown
them. I decide that they must be cut off in honour of
God and of our Lady." This was done ; " the tresses
were cut, and the priest had them carried inside the
church on a pole, on which were placed the tresses of
women who would be saved." Then the lady was able
to enter the church, and she praised the Virgin. But as
she was going away she could not help thinking " of her
fair hair that she had left," and she exclaimed : " Holy
Mary, my heart is sorrowful for my hair that I leave
you, and I cannot well make up my mind to it." She
had scarcely spoken when the tresses were at once restored
to her " as fair as they were before ; " but the -blindness
came back too, and blind she remained for ever, which is
a good example, " ung bel exemplaire," for ladies that
" seek false pleasures in their fine waists and faces." »
Indulgences were an immense attraction ; they had
' " The Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry," translated from the
French, ed. Thomas Wright, Early English Text Society, 1868, p. 70. The
original French is of the fourteenth century.
2 " Miracles de Nostre Dame," collected by Jean Mielot, ed. G. F.
Warner, Roxburghe Club, 1885, p. 58. This version of the tale is of the
fifteenth century, but the story itself is much older.

384 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
been freely granted on a large scale to every im
portant shrine, and popular imagination still further
magnified them. The pilgrim from Rome, back in his
village, exaggerated as willingly their amount as that of
the marvels which he had seen, or thought he had seen.
One such pilgrim, an Englishman of the fourteenth
century, dazzled by his recollections, has rimed his im
pressions of a journey taken by him to Italy. As a poet
he does not rank high, but he does not pretend to, and his
only aim is to supply precise figures and definite informa
tion. His strong narrow devotion allowed him to pay
attention to nothing except thousands of bodies of martyrs
that he never tires of enumerating. By thousands also
are reckoned the years of indulgence which he flashes
in the eyes of his stay-at-home countrymen :
" Gif men wuste (knew), grete and smale.
The pardoun that is at grete Rome,
Thei wolde tellen in heore dome (in their opinion).
Hit were no neod to mon in cristiante
To passe in to the holy lond over the see
To Jerusalem, ne to Kateryne." '
His readers will have first a brief and simplified
history of Rome ; it is a city to which came long ago the
Duchess of Troy with her two sons, Romulus and Ro-
mulon, who afterwards founded the town. The duchess
thus seems to have chosen to settle in a city which did
not yet exist, but Rome is a land of wonders. It was
pagan, until Peter and Paul (and then the very facts
inject their eloquence into our traveller's lines) :
" Hit hedde i-bought.
With gold ne selver, ne with no goode,
j^ Bot with heore flesch and with heore blode."
The enumeration of the churches thereupon begins,
and for each of them are invariably told the amount of
' i.e. St. Catherine of Mount Sinai.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 385
indulgences attached to it and of relics kept there. The
benefits are proportioned to the merits ; thus when a
man sees the vernicle, that is, the holy sudary which
received the image of the Saviour, he gets three thousand
years of pardon if he dwells in Rome, nine thousand if
he comes from a neighbouring country,
" And thou that passest over the see.
Twelve thousend yer is graunted to the."
When you enter Sts. Vitus and Modestus, the third
of your sins are remitted. Then, you descend into the
catacombs : " But thou most take candel liht,
Elles thou gost merk (dark) as niht.
For under the eorthe most thou wende.
Thou maight not see bifore ne bihynde.
For thider fledde mony men
For drede of deth to saven hem.
And suffrede peynes harde and sore.
In hevene to dwelle for ever more."
The bodies of martyrs are countless ; ' four thousand
of them at Saint Prudence, thirteen hundred at Saint
Prassede, seven thousand at Sts. Vitus and Modestus.
From time to time a famous name brings up an historic
glimpse, such as the account of the foundation of Rome,
or an abridged life of Constantine ; at first a pagan and
a leper, " In Mahoun was al his thouht."

¦ William Wey, in the fifteenth century, thus mentions the catacombs :
" Item ibi est una spelunca nuncupata Sancti Ksflixti cimiterium, et qui
eam pertransit cum devocione, illi indulgentur omnia sua peccata. Et ibi
multa corpora sanctorum sunt, que nuUus hominum numerare nequit nisi
solus Deus." " The Itineraries of William Wey," Roxburghe Club, 1857,
p. 146. Wey, like the author of the poem, sometimes mentions prodigious
numlDers of bodies of martyrs ; at the church caUed Scala Cell, " sunt ossa
sanctorum decem millia militum ; " in one single part of St, Peter's at Rome,
are " PetroneUa et xjji millia sanctorum martyrum,"
25

386 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
But according to our author's information, he was con
verted and cured by Pope Sylvester. The church of
St. Mary the Round formerly bore another name :
" Agrippa dude hit make
For Sibyl and Neptanes sake. . . .
He gaf hit name Panteon."
He placed there a m.agnificent golden idol sitting, of
a peculiar form :
" Hit looked fcrth as a cat.
He caUed it Neptan."
This idol had a cap or cover of brass which was one day
blown cff by the wind, and carried to the church of St.
Peter. Then Pope Boniface asked the Em.peror Julian
to give him the Pantheon, to which that prince consented ;
and one year, on November ist, the hatless cat having
been removed, the sovereign pontiff" consecrated the
building, and baptized it St. Mary the Round.
As for relics, there are fevv' objects mentioned in
Holy Writ which have not been recovered, and may rot
be venerated at Rcm.c.' The table of the Last Supper is
there, as well as Aaron's rod, fragments of the multiplied
leaves and fishes, hay from the stall at Bethlehem, a
swaddling-clcth of the infant Jesus, and several other
things, seme of which are strange enough. Part of these
relics are still in the same churches, for instance, at Santa
Maria Maggiore,^ " Seinte Marie the Maiour," the portrait
' "\^ illiam Wey said of the church of the Holy Cross : " Item, ibi sunt
duo ciphi, unus plcnus sanguine Ihesu Cristi, and alter plenus lacte beate
Marie Virginis," " Itineraries," p. 146. Those who drink at the three
fountains which gushed out at the death of St. Paul are cured of all maladies ;
those who visit the church of St. Mary of the Annunciation will never be
struck by lightning ; at the church of St. Vivien there is " herba crescens quam
ipsa plantavit et valet contra caducum morbum." At the church of St.
Sehastian is shown a foot-print of Jesus; and it is, in fact, stiU to be
seen there at the present day. Hid- pp. 143--148,
? In the Bcrghese chapel.

PILGRIR/IS AND PILGRIMAGES 387
of the Virgin painted by St. Luke. This is not, however,
according to our pilgrim, a picture really made by St.
Luke ; he was going to do it, and had prepared his
colours, when he suddenly found the portrait before him,
finished by the hands of angels :
" Seint Luik while he lived in londe,
Wolde have peynted hit with his honde.
And whon he hedde ordeyned so
AUe colours that schulde ther to.
He lond an ymage al a-pert,
Non such ther was middelert.
Mad with angel hond and not with his
As men in Rome witnesseth this." '
More complete and conscientious in his descriptions,
an educated Englishman of the following century, a
voracious reader, and active writer, of books, no other
than the chronicler and theologian, John Capgrave, prior
of King's Lynn, having gone to Rome on a pilgrimage,
about the year 1450, composed, on his return, a " Solace
of Pilgrimes," wanting to imitate, he said, Pythagoras,
Plato, St. Jerome, Marco Polo, and him whom he con
sidered as his compatriot, the then unmasked Mandeville,
who, all of them, having travelled, wrote of their journeys :
' " The Stacions of Rome," fourteenth century, ed. F. J. FurnivaU,
Early English Text Society, 1867. Another version of the " Stacions,"
with variants, was printed by the same in " Political, ReUgious, and Love
Poems," Early English Text Society, 1 866, p. 113. See in this last volume
notes by W. M. Rossetti on the " Stacions," pp. x,xi-xlviii, paralleling the
information fiimished by the English author with that given by the Italian
Francino, who wrote on the same subject in 1600, and whose numbers are
much less exaggerated. Mr. Rossetti states also what is still shown at Rome
of the reUcs named in the " Stacions."
The Saint Luke legend appears in a somewhat different form in William
Wey, according to whom the saint was about to paint when he fell asleep,
and the angels made the picture for him, " Itineraries," p. 143. A similar
legend is attached to the great wooden crucifix of Byzantine workman
ship, called in the middle ages the " Saint Vou " (the Holy Face, vultus),
at Lucca, begun by Nicodemus after the Ascension, and miraculously
finished during his -sleep, Bedier, " Legendes epiques," 1908, II. 210,

388 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
" Also there was a man of Venys whech they called Marcus
Paulus ; he laboured all the Soudane's londe and descryved
on to us the nature of the cuntre, the condiciones of the
men and the stately aray of the great Cane (khan) houshold.
Eke Jon Maundevyle Knyth of Yngland, aftir his laboure,
made a book ful solacious on to his nacyoun. After all
these grete cryeris of many wonderfull thingis I wyl folow
with a smal pypyng of such straunge sitis (sights) as I
have seyn and swech straunge thingis as I have herd." '
This justice must be rendered him that, while his
book is full of " straunge thingis," he never adds any
of his own invention ; when he says, this I have seen, it
can, if not afterwards destroyed, still be seen to-day ;
when he copies an inscription, his copy, as can be easily
verified, is accurate. But, fond of books, he believed
in them ; who ever failed to believe in what he loved .''
The "Mirabilia Rom.as" are the guide of this guide-book
maker ; ^ so that to the enumeration of the holy places
with their relics and indulgences, and his description of
the ancient, now vanished, church of St. Peter, and all
the famous sanctuaries of the papal city, he adds the
wonders of fabulous Rome, with the temple on Capitol
hill, and in it, "a mervelous craft, that of every region
of the world stcod an ymage made all of tre and in his
hand a lytil belle ; as often as ony of these regiones was
in purpos to rebelle a geyn the grete mageste of Rome,
a non this ymage that was assigned to that regioun schulde
knylle his bell." This device, so celebrated in the middle
ages, was due to that great enchanter " Virgil," the magic
of whose lines had been appreciated for different motives
in Reman days.
' " Ye Solace of Pilgrimes, a description of Rome circa a.d. 1450, by
John Capgrave," ed. MiUs and Bannister, Oxford, 1911, 4°.
2 As well as that of the author of the poem. 1 his immensely popular
work of unknown date was in existence anyhow in the Xllth century. See
" Mirabilia Urbis Rom^, the Marvels of Rcpie," with notes by F. M.
Nichols, Lcndon, 1889,

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 389
The attractions of Rome were, for the pilgrim, without
peer in Italy, but other cities could almost rival it ; Venice
especially was full of wonders, and was admired and
visited accordingly, witness, for example, the travelling
notes of a troop of French pilgrims in the year 1395.
In this " most excellent, noble, great and fine town all
seated in the sea," may be seen, they aver, the arm of
" our Lord St. George," the burdon (staff) of St. Nicholas,
one of the water-pots of Cana, one ear of St. Paul, some
of the "roasted flesh of St. Lawrence turned to powder,"
three of the stones thrown at St. Stephen, the body of
St. Mark, " which is a very fine and noble thing." There
is, besides, " in the Maison-Dieu of Venice one of
the molar teeth of a giant that was called Goliath,
which giant David killed, and know you that this tooth
is mor; than half a foot long and weighs twelve
pounds." '
Thus did returning travellers relate their recollections,
to the delighted wonderment of their countrymen. The
wish to set out in their turn was awakened in them, and
those who remained in their village associated themselves
to the pious journey by their prayers and some small
gift of money. All along his road the pilgrim found
similar dispositions ; to receive and help him was to
share in his merits, and thus it was that people in the
humblest ranks, assisted from place to place,^ could
accomplish distant pilgrimages. The rules of several gilds
provided for the case of a member setting out to fulfil
a vow. In order to participate in his good work, all the
" bretheren and sisteren " accompanied him out of the
town, and on bidding him farewell offered him their gift.
' " Le Saint Voyage de Jherusalem du Seigneur d'Anghire," ed. Bon-
nardot and Longnon, " Societe des Anciens Textes Frangais," 1878, pp. 3, 4.
* On the normal cost of such journeys (from Rouen to St. James of
Compostela, in 1377, 343 fr. of our present money), see d'Avenel, " Histoire
economique," vi. 621.

390 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
They watched their friend go off with his deliberate step,
beginning a journey across many countries, to last many
months, sometimes several years. They returned to the
town, and the elders, who knew the world, no doubt
told what strange things their friend was like to see in
those distant lands, and what subjects for edification he
would meet with on his way.
The gild of the Resurrection at Lincoln, founded in
1374, had among its rules, " If any brother or sister
wishes to make pilgrimage to Rome, St. James of Galicia,
or the Holy Land, he shall forewarn the gild ; and all
the bretheren and sisteren shall go with him to the city
gate, and each shall give him a half-penny at least." The
same rule was observed by the Fullers' gild of Lincoln,
founded in 1297 ; the pilgrim going to Rome was accom
panied as far as Queen's Cross, outside the town, if he
left on a Sunday or a feast-day ; and if he could let them
know of his return, and it were not a working day, all
went to meet him at the same place and accompanied
him to the monastery. The tailors of the same city also
gave a half-penny to him among them who was going to
Rome or St. James, and a penny to him who went to the
Holy Land. The ordinances of the Gild of the Virgin,
founded at Hull in 1357, had : " If any brother or sister
of the gild wishes, at any time, to make a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, then, in order that all the gild may share
in his pilgrimage, he shall be fully released from his
yearly payment until his return."
Some gilds kept open house for pilgrims, always
with the same object of having a part thereby in the
merits of the traveller. Thus the gild-merchant of
Coventry, founded in 1340, maintained " a common
lodging-house of thirteen beds," to receive poor travellers
who cross the country going on pilgrimage or from any
other pious motive. This hostelry was managed by a
governor, aided by a woman who washed the feet of the

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 391
guests and took care of them. The annual expenditure
on this foundation was ten pounds sterling.'
When one of the king's servants had a pilgrimage to
make, the prince, in consideration of his motive, willingly
authorized him to depart, and even helped him with
money. Edward III gave to William Clerk, one of his
messengers, one pound six shillings and eightpence, to
help him in his expenses during the pilgrimage under
taken by him to Jerusalem and Mount Sinai. ^ If the
man were of great importance, and especially if he intended
to fight the unbelievers, public prayers were offered for
his journey, his " triumphal fighting," and his safe
return, as was done when Henry of Lancaster, cousin
to Edward III, went " to the parts beyond sea with
certain great and noble men of this realm " to attack
the enemies of the cross, in this case, the pagans of
Prussia. The prayers were prescribed for Sundays and
fete days, when there would be " the greatest multitude
of people in the churches." 3
All this in spite of the fourteenth century's not being,
as we have seen, an age of deep and true devotion. The
Popes lived at Avignon, their prestige was declining,
particularly in England ; even bishops showed at
times scant respect for the Roman Court. Nowhere can
be found, not even in Wyclif, more daring accusations
and more scandalous anecdotes concerning the Pope
than in the chronicle written by Thomas of Burton, Abbot
of Meaux, near Beverley. He even speaks with a tnge
of irony of indulgences. As a special favour to the faith
ful who died during a pilgrimage to Rome, Clement VI
" ordered the angels of Paradise," writes the abbot, " to
lead their souls straight to the gates of heaven without
' Toulmin Smith, " EngUsh Gilds," pp. 157, 177, 180, 182, 231.
* Devon's " Issues of the Exchequer," 1837, p. 159.
3 Mandate from the Archbishop of York, Feb. i, 13 51-2, in Raine,
" Historical Papers from the Northern Registers," p. 402.

392 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
making them pass through purgatory." The same Pope
granted what the pilgrim of the " Stacions " seems to
have ignored, that those who looked upon the holy sudary
should return to the state they were in before baptism.
Lastly, " he confirmed all the indulgences granted by
two hundred sovereign pontiffs his predecessors, which
are innumerable." ' Clement was, indeed, the two
hundredth. At the period when monastic chroniclers did not
scruple to record anecdotes on the Roman Court like
those in Thomas of Burton's, general devotion was not
merely lessened, it was disorganized, unbalanced. The
chroniclers show, indeed, that excesses of impiety co
existed with excesses of fervour ; the false pardoner,
retailer of the merits of the saints, fell in upon the highway
with the bleeding flagellant.^ The papacy might show
commendable good sense by its condemnations of both ; 3
its decrees did not suffice to restore the equilibrium of
' " Chronica monasterii de Melsa," ed. E. A. Bond, 1868, vol. Ui. p. 88,
Rolls Series. The Abbot declares that Clement VI replied to the reproaches
of his confessor as to his bad life : " Quod facimus modo facimus consilio
medicorum." About his theory of the " treasury," see supra, p. 314. The
Pontiff, Pierre Rogier, a Frenchman, of great learning and extraordinary
memory, of knightly manners, fond of festivities and amusements, had been
an opponent of Edward III in the matter of benefices, which may have still
increased the Abbot's animosity. His decision as to the angels was inserted
in his bull on jubilees, which were to recur every fifty years instead of every
century ; it concerns pilgrims coming to the jubilee.
^ "In which year (1350) there came into England certain penitents,
noblemen and foreigners, who beat their bare bodies very sharply, to the
effusion of blood, now weeping, now singing ; yet, as was said, they did this
too unadvisedly, being without licence from the apostolic see." Walsingham,
"Historia AngUcana," Rolls Series, vol. i. p. 275. See also Robert de
Avesbury, " Hist. Edwardi Tertii," ed. Heame, Oxford, 1720, p. 179. The
flagellants whipped themselves with knotted cords furnished with nails, they
prostrated themselves to the ground singing, with their arms extended cross
wise. 3 The flagellants were condemned by Clement VI in 1349; he ordered
the archbishops, bishops, c&c, to have them imprisoned. Labbe, " Sacro
sancta ConciUa," Florence ed., vol. xxv. col. 11 53.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 393
men's minds, and the bounds of reason were continually
being passed ; in ardent piety as in impious revolt men
went to the verge of madness. The account of the repul
sive sacrileges committed in York Cathedral by the
partisans of the Bishop of Durham seems unbelievable,
yet the facts cannot be doubted, being reported by the
archbishop himself' Faith weakened or went astray ;
men became at once sceptical and intolerant. It was
not in them the modern, serenely cold and imperturbable
scepticism, but a violent movement of the entire being,
impelled to burn what it adores. The man acts by fits ;
he doubts his doubt, his burst of laughter dazes him ;
he has had his revel and his orgy, and when the white
light of morning comes he will be the prey of despair,
shed tears, be racked with anguish, proclaim his conversion
and vow maybe to go on a pilgrimage. Walsingham
sees one of the causes of the peasants' revolt in the incred
ulity of the barons : " Some among them believe, it is
said, that there is no God, they deny the sacrament of
the altar and resurrection after death, and consider that
as is the end of the beast of burden, so is the end of man
himself" 2
Such incredulity did not exclude superstitious prac
tices. To go straight forward was the privilege of the
happy few ; the many, instead of opening the gates of
heaven with their own hands, imagined they could have
it done by that of others ; they had Paradise gained for
them by the neighbouring monastery, as they had their
' Letter of the Archbishop of York to his official, " Historical Papers
from the Northern Registers," ed. Raine, pp. 397-399. The guilty were
not worthless vagabonds ; one has the title of magister, another is profe.3Sor
of civil law.
' " Nam quidam illorum credebant, ut asseritur, nullum Deum esse,
nihil esse sacramentum altaris, nuUam post mortem resurrectionem, sed ut
jumentum moritur, ita et hominem finire." " Historia AngUcana," vol.
ii. p. 12. Langland also complains of the scepticism of the nobles, who
question the mysteries, and make these grave matters the subject of light
conversation after meals. " Piers Plowman," Text C, pass. xU. 1. 35.

394 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
lands tilled for them by their tenants ; eternal welfare
had become a matter of commerce and could be bought
with the letters of fraternity of the mendicant friars and
the lying indulgences of false pardoners. Men lived at their
ease, and when the sad hour came, made pious donations
in their wills, as if they could, according to the strong
words of the French historian, Claude de Seyssel, " corrupt
and win over by gifts God and the saints, whom we ought
to appease by good works and by penitence for our sins." '
Very instructive reading is that of the last wills and
testaments of the rich lords of the fourteenth century.
Pages are filled with devotional bequests ; gifts are left
to shrines, convents, chapels, and hermits ; testators
who had abstained from going in their lifetime, made
pilgrimages by proxy after their death, paying the proxy.
The same Humphrey Bohun who sent " a good man
and true " to the tomb of Thomas of Lancaster, also
ordered that after his demise a priest should be sent to
Jerusalem, " chiefly," said he, " for my lady mother, and
for my lord father, and for ourselves," with the obligation
to say masses at all the chapels which he might meet on
his way.2 Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, ordered by
her will, that five men-at-arms should fight in her name
in case there should be a " comune vyage," otherwise a
crusade, within seven years following her death. They
would receive one hundred marks each, and the merit of
their fights would accrue to their employer, and not to
themselves, their own recompense being of this world,
and consisting in the hundred marks. 3
' " Les louenges du roy Louys xij.," by Claude de Seyssel, Paris, i 508.
• " A CoUection of the Wills of the Kings and Queens of England," &c.,
printed by J. Nichols, London, 1780. WiU of Humphrey Bohun, Earl of
Hereford and Essex, who died 1361, p. 54.
3 She died November 4, 1360. Nichols, ibid. p. 29.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 395
V
Most difficult and holiest of all, the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem remained, in spite of so many indulgences
attached by the Popes to the churches in Rome, the one
without peer, as well as it was the oldest established ;
it dated back, indeed, from, at least, the days of Constantine.
Settled in Palestine during the fourth century, St. Jerome
writes to Paulinus : " From all the world people are
flocking here. The whole of mankind fills the city." '
This is confirmed by his friend the enthusiastic
Paula, in whose veins flowed the ardent blood of the
Scipios and the Gracchi, and who trying to persuade
her beloved Marcella, a rich and pious Roman matron,
to join them there, tells her that all the greatest and best,
those from Gaul, those from Britain, " divisus ab orbe
nostro Britannus " (for she, too, knows those classics
whom Jerome constantly quotes), without speaking of
the Persians, the Armenians, and all the East, are to be
met in the Holy Land : "A variety of languages, but
one only religion." There are " so many places of prayer
that one cannot visit them all in one day." And such
places ! " What sentences, what words would be appro
priate to tell you of the cave of our Saviour ? and of that
stable where, as a babe, He cried : a spot to be honoured
rather by silence than by inadequate words. Where are
the vast porticoes, the gilt canopies .? . . . In this poor
earthly place the Maker of heaven was born ; here He
was wrapped in swadling clothes, here seen by the shep
herds, here revealed by a star, here adored by the Magi."
Come, Oh come 1 " Will not the moment arrive when
a breathless traveller shall announce to us that our
Marcella has reached Palestine . . . Will not the day
come when we can visit together the Saviour's grotto,
' From Bethleem, last quarter of the fourth century. Migne, " Patro-
logias Latins tomus XXII," col. 582.

396 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
weep at His tomb, kiss the wood of the cross, and be
raised in our minds with the rising Lord on the Mount
of Olives .? " '
But even then, thoughtful, level-headed St. Jerome
feared that enthusiasm might be carried too far, and
everyday duties neglected for the excitement of the
Palestine journey. It was, of course, in itself a pious
and laudable thing, if one could properly do so, to come
and venerate " the places where the feet of our Lord
had stood, and the almost recent traces left of His
nativity and His passion." But this should not be
considered a Christian's chief duty : " Do not think
that something is lacking in your faith because you
have not seen Jerusalem. I do not consider myself any
better because I live here." To lead a good life is
the chief thing : " What is praiseworthy is not to have
been at Jerusalem, but to have lived righteously there.
. . . The places where the cross was and the Resur
rection occurred, benefit those who bear their cross and
who, with Christ, rise again every day. . . . The palace
of heaven is just as accessible from Britain as from
Jerusalem." To thousands who have never seen the
holy city " the gate of paradise is wide open. ... A
grand thing it is to be a Christian, not to seem one." '•
The movement, however, once started never stopped.
On the contrary, it gathered strength ; hospices for pil
grims going to Jerusalem dotted the roads leading to
their usual places of embarkation (chiefly Marseilles and
Venice), several being built at the principal crossings of
the Alps, the Great and the Little Saint Bernard, the St.
Gothard, Mount Cenis, etc. A " Confrerie des Pelerins

' " Epistola XLVI Pauhe et Eustochii (one of her daughters) ad Mar-
cellam, De Sanctis Locis." Migne, ibid., col. 483 ff. F'rom Bethleem,
same period.
» From Bethleem, same period. Migne, ibid. To Paulinus col.
580 ff. ; to Desiderius, col. 493 ff.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 397
de la Terre Sainte " had been founded in Paris for them
by Louis, first Duke of Bourbon, who, greatly interested,
like his grand father Saint Louis, in the freeing of the
Holy Sepulchre, and bearing for a time the empty title of
King of Thessalonica, had been chosen as leader of one
of those numerous crusades that never took place.'
During a period of two hundred years pilgrimages
to Jerusalem had had, indeed, for their object a conquest
and not simply an inspection of the holy places. All
nations had taken part, from the first of those prodigious
attempts, the crusades, in 1096, to the last one in 1270,
in which St. Louis died before the walls of Tunis, while
his companion, young Edward of England, loth to give
up, had sworn not to go home without having struck
a blow at the Saracens in Holy Land, and returned as
King Edward I, wounded, but having occupied Acre
and kept his word.
The crusade, after those great expeditions, eight in
number, continued to be talked about as much as ever ;
mere talk, it is true, in most cases. In the midst of their
wars the kings of France and of England berated each
other for being the only hindrance to the departure of
the Christians, for neither would go, leaving his rival
behind, free to act in his absence. Philip VI of Valois
and Edward III both protest that, but for the other, they
would go and fight the Saracen. " It is the fault of the
English," writes Philip, " that the holy journey beyond
sea has been hindered." It is the doing of the King of
' He and numerous companions had rece'ved the Cross at the hands of
the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 13 16, and the plan seemed for a time so near
realization that nobles and villeins sold their lands and houses, to take part
in the crusade. A plan thereof and a draft of the contract with the Mar
seilles shipowners has been published with excellent notes, by A. de Boislisle,
" Annuaire-BuUetin de la Societe de I'histoire de France," 1872, pp. 230 and
246. The latest date suitable for the start is stated to be the middle of
April. Full details are given as to the supplies of every sort, to be provided
for the galleys, food and the rest ; " panis biscoctus," i,e. biscuit.

398 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
France, solemnly proclaims Edward III to the world,
which has turned him from the " sancto passagio trans-
marino." '
The utmost that was usually attempted,^ now consisted
in small, ineffectual expeditions, so ill-conceived at times
as to cause the wonderment and even the merriment of
the infidel : such as the Franco-Anglo-Genoese crusade
of 1390, with Louis, third Duke of Bourbon, as
commander-in-chief, and which, on the recommendation
of the Genoese, who suffered more than any from the
inroads of the Barbaresques, went to lay siege, of all places,
to the city of Mahdia, the " Aufrike " of Froissart, 3 on
the east coast of Tunisia. The French were apparently
the most numerous, but, says Froissart, " Also the Duke
of Lancastre had a bastarde sonne called Henry of Lan
castre : he had devocion to go in the same voyage, and
he provided him of good knightes and squiers of
Englande that accompanyed him in that voyage." The
comte de Foix had also, ready at hand, a " bastarde sonne "
of his own, whom he sent with a large retinue. The
English prince was not, however, the future Henry IV,
who was no bastard, but his half-brother, John Beaufort,
who being an adulterine son well answered to the descrip
tion. Henry had intended to go, hence Froissart's mis
take, but he went instead to fight the pagans in Prussia
and Lithuania, and, being fond of pilgrimages and
shrines, performed, as a pilgrim, the journeys to Rome
and Jerusalem, before he assumed the crown and had,
in spite of his religious dispositions, his cousin Richard
assassinated. ' Robert of Avesbury, " Historia Edwardi Tertii," ed. Hearne, Oxford,
172c, pp. 63, 115.
2 The single and last attempt on a grand scale was the ill-starred campaign
against Sultan Bajazet which ended in the disaster and massacre of Nicopolis,
September, 1 396 ; on which and on all those latter-day attempts, see DelaviUe
le Roulx, " La France en Orient au XIV' Siecle," Paris, 1886, 2 vols.
3 Built on Cape Africa, hence her name in the chronicles of the time.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 399
The start from Genoa for the new Tunisian expedi
tion was splendid to see ; so the starts usually were :
" Great pleasure it was," says Froissart, " to beholde
their departynge, and to se their standardes, getornes
(banners) and penons, wavynge in the wynde, shynynge
against the sonne, and to here the trompettes and claryons
sowning in the ayre with other mynstrelsy," so that the
whole sea rang with the music.'
The Saracens were dumbfounded at this visit : what
had they done, and what could be the object ? That the
Genoese had grudges against them was natural enough ;
but what ailed the others ? Ready for the stoutest defence
of their walled Mahdia, they were, however, curious to
ascertain the reason, and they sent one of their number,
who spoke Italian, to explain " howe we have in nothynge
trespassed them ; of a trouthe, afore this tyme, there
hath been warre bytwene us and the Genovoys," but that
does not concern Christians from " farre countreys."
The Genoese " are our neighbours, they take of us and
we of them ; we have been auncyente enemyes and shall
be, excepte whan treuce is betwene us." But why are
the others interfering .''
The leaders of the army agreed that a reply should
be sent ; they held council, twelve of them, " in the
duke of Burbons tent," and gave an answer to the effect
that the reason why they made this war " was bycause
the Sonne of God, called Jesu Chryst ... by their
lyne and generacyon, was put to deth and crucyfyed,"
and also because the Saracens did not believe in baptism^
nor " in the Virgyn Mary, Mother to Jhesu Cryst. . . .''
" At this aunswere the Sarazyns dyd nothinge but
laugh and sayd howe that aunswere was nothynge reason-
' Berners' Froissart (Ker, v. 361), where, however, the following passage
does not appear : " Et autres menestrels faire leur mestier de pipes et de
chalemelles et de naquaires, tant qug du son et de Ja yoix qui en yssoient la
mer en retentiscoit toute."

400 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
able, for it was the Jewes that put Chryst to dethe and
not they. Thus the siege still endured." '
The usual ally of the infidel did not fail him : sickness,
fevers, and epidemics worked havoc among the besiegers,
who had, of all months, selected July for their attempt.
They tried to storm the city, but were repulsed with great
loss, and after some eight weeks of fruitless labour, brilliant
combats, and many deaths, accepted a patched-up treaty
granting the Genoese some slight advantage ; raised the
siege, and returned home, with probably less " trompettes
and claryons sowning in the ayre " than when they had
started. The acceptance of a discussion with the infidel during
this abortive crusade was characteristic of the time.
More prone than before to examine inherited beliefs, a
good many men were found in the fourteenth century to
question the very principle of the crusade. We crush
the infidel, why not convert him ? Is it not wiser, more
reasonable, and even more conformable to the religion of
Christ ? Were the apostles whom He sent to us Gentiles
covered with armour and provided with swords ? Reflec
tions like these occur in the works, not only of reforming
minds like Wyclif or Langland,^ but of pious well-meaning
conservative thinkers like Gower, who says in his
" Confessio Amantis " :
" To sleen and fighten they us bidde
Hem whom they shuld, as the boke saith.

' Bemers' Froissart, ed. Ker, 1902, vol. v, chap. 165, 167, 170. Cf.
DelaviUe le Roulx, " La France en Orient au XIV Siecle," Paris, 1886,
chap. iv. At p. 14, vol. ii, a list of all the chief participants in this crusade.
^ Langland speaks of the Saracens without cursing them ; they might
be saved, but for Mahomet who deceived them in anger at not being made
pope ; Christians ought to convert them ; the pope makes indeed bishops of
Nazareth, Nineveh, etc., but they take care never to visit their indocile flocks ;
let us not forget that " Jews, Gentiles and Saracens " are sincere in their
beUefs, " Piers Plowm.an," Text C, pass. xvii. U, 123 ff.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 401
Converten unto Cristes feith.
But herof have I great merveile
How they wol bidde me traveile ;
A Saracen if I slee shaU,
I slee the soule forth withall.
And that was never Cristjs lore."
Failing crusades, then, just as before those great
military undertakings had begun, small troops of pilgrims,
privately formed, started on the road to Jerusalem, still
in their eyes, in spite of all St. Jerome might have said,
the best road to heaven. They were, however, many of
them, inspired by mixed motives, for this was also the
road to adventure, and there, again, were very apparent
the chivalric and restless instincts of the period.
A good number of such caravans came from England ;
the English were already, and had been even before, and
continue to this day, great travellers. They were to be met
everywhere, and their knowledge of French stood them in
good stead in most of the countries they went through.
This was, as " Mandeville " states, the common language
of the upper classes everywhere ; ' it was also that spoken
in the East by the European, the " Frank." Trevisa,
finding that the English were forgetting that language,
deplores it ; how will they do if they go abroad } " That
is harme for hem and they schulle passe the see and
travaille in straunge landes and in many other places." ^
They tried to acquire notions of it before setting out on
their travels, and employed competent persons to compose
manuals of conversation for them to learn, in the words
' In his book is written (in French) : " And knov^ you that I would have
put this little book into Latin for brevity, but because many understand
Romance better than Latin, I have put it into Romance, that it be understood,
and that the lords and knights and other noblemen who do not know Latin,
or but little, and who have been beyond seas, may know and understand
whether I speak truth or not." Sloane MS. 1464, fol. 3, at the British
Museum, a French MS. of the beginning of the fifteenth century.
= In his translation of Ralph Higden 's " Polychronicon," ed. C. Babington,
vol. ii. p. r6i. Rolls Series.
26

402 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
of the author of one such work, an Englishman of the
fourteenth century, " how to speak and pronounce well,
and to write correctly sweet French, which is the finest
and most graceful language, the noblest to speak of any
in the world after Latin of the schools, and is better prized
and loved than any other by all men ; for God made it
so sweet and lovable chiefly to His own praise and honour.
And therefore it may well compare with the language of
the angels in heaven, on account of its great sweetness
and beauty." So spoke this teacher of what he had to
teach.' The English went much abroad ; every author who
draws their portrait lays stress on their taste for moving
about, and their love of distant travel ; the moon is
considered, in consequence, as their planet. According
to Gower, the moon's influence is the cause why they
visit so many far-off countries :
" Bot what man under his [i.e., the moon's] pouer
Is bore, he schall his place change
And seche manye londes strange ;
And as of this condicion
The Mones disposicion
Upon the lond of Alemaigne
Is set, and ek upon Bretaigne,
Which nou is cleped Engelond,
For thei travaile in every lond." ^
Wyclif places them under the patronage of the same
planet, but draws different conclusions therefrom ; 3
' " La Maniere de Langage," ed. Paul Meyer, " Revue Critique,"
vol. X., 1870, pp. 373, 382 ; dedication dated May 29, 1396.
2 " Confessio Amantis,"" Complete Works," ed. G. C. Macaulay, Oxford,
1899, ff. four vols., vol. iii. p. 253.
3 According to him, the English, who, as history shows, have certainly
improved, are wanting in perseverance, " Et hinc secundum astronomos lunam
habent planetam propriam, quje in motu et lumine est magis nistabilis."
" FascicuU Zizaniorum," ed. Shirley, p. 270, Rolls Series. Caxton later
also considers the moon as par excellence the planet of the English : " Fer
we englysshe men ben born under the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 403
Ralph Higden the chronicler expresses himself in these
terms, most of which seem prophetic, they have proved
so exact : " That people are curious enough that they
may know and tell the wonders that they have seen ; they
cultivate other regions, and succeed still better in distant
countries than in their own, . . . wherefore it is that
they are spread so wide through the earth, considering
every other land that they inhabit as their own country.
They are a race able for every industry." '
A number of those adventure seekers were established
in Italy, where they had become condottieri, and went
fighting up and down the peninsula according to the will
of whomsoever paid them. Such were John Hawkwood,
whose tomb still adorns the cathedral at Florence,^ William
Gold, and several others. Fierce folk they were, with
ardent passions, ready sometimes, as in Homeric days,
to do and sacrifice as much to recover a fugitive girl as
to take a town. One letter of William Gold may give
an idea of the temper of these bellicose wanderers. On
August 9, 1378, he wrote to Louis Gonzaga, lord of
Mantua, concerning the girl Jeannette, of France :
"... Let her be detained at my suit, for if you should
have a thousand golden florins spent for her, I will pay
them without delay ; for if I should have to follow her
to Avignon I will obtain this woman. Now, my lord,
should I be asking a trifle contrary to law, yet ought you
not to cross me in this, for some day I shall do mare for
you than a thousand united French women could effect ;
never stedfaste but ever waverynge." Prologue to his " Boke of Eneydos
compyled by Vyrgyle," 1490.
' "Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden," edited by C. Babington, 1869,
vol. U. pp. 166, 168, Rolls Series.
' lie appears in John of Gaunt's accounts : " Item a Esmo.i de Wyght
esquier a monsire Johan de Haukewode, de nostre doun, Ixvj s. viij." "John
of Gaunt's Register," ed. Armitage Smith, 1911, vol. ii. p. 299 ; no date,
but of 1372, or shortly after.

404 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
and if there be need of me in a matter of greater import,
you shall have for the asking a thousand spears at my
back. Therefore, in conclusion, again and again, I
entreat that this Janet may be put in a safe place unknown
to anybody, and there kept until I send some servant of
mine for her with a letter from myself, for I would do
more for you in greater matters. And I pray you, thwart
me not about putting her in a safe place, for you alone,
and no one else are lord in Mantua.
" The Camp under Verona, August 9, 1378.
" P.S. — I beseech by all means that [the] said Janet
may not quit Mantua, but be in safe custody, and so you
will have obliged me for ever."
No less determined as a warrior than as a lover, and
accustomed, as it seems, in both cases, to put people to
flight, William Gold was made a citizen of Venice in
recognition of his services on April 27, 1380, and in
July of the same year received from the Doge Andrea
Contarini a pension of 500 gold ducats for life.'
Thinking less of the Jeannettes to be met on the way,
troops of pilgrims sailed from England, beginning their
long journey towards the Holy Land, usually provided
with letters from their sovereign, to serve both as pass
ports and as recommendations in case of need. The
tenor of these documents, written in French or in Latin,
Was usually similar to that of the following letter granted
by Edward III in 1354 to one who, it is true, was more
of a fighter than a pilgrim : " Know all men that the
noble Jean le Meingre, knight, otherwise Bussigand
[Boucicaut], our prisoner, is about to set forth, duly
licensed by us, with twelve knights to St. James, and thence
to march against the enemies of Christ in the Holy Land ;
and that we have taken him and his twelve companions,
' Rawdon Brown, " Calendar of State Papers relating to English Affairs
... at Venice," London, 1864, vol. i. pp. 24, 29 ; original in Latin.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 405
their servants, horses, and harnesses under our protection
and safe conduct." '
Such travellers were well received by the French
King of Cyprus, of the famous Lusignan family ; they
brought him news of the outer world, with them came
variety and hope ; they also were sometimes able to
actually assist him in his difficulties, which were ceaseless,
and the king showed his pleasure in his letters. Thus
James I of Lusignan, " King of Jerusalem and Cyprus,"
writes from Nicosia, in 1393, to Richard II, that a knight
has no need of a personal recommendation to be welcome
in the island ; his subjects always are. It was for him
an honour and delight to be visited by " your noble relative
the lord Henry Percy." ^ In the same manner the troop
of French pilgrims, to which belonged the lord of Anglure,
was welcomed in Cyprus, by the same king, in 1396.
They reached the island on their way home, after a fearful
storm, in which they nearly lost their lives. 3 As soon
as James heard of their having landed he sent to them
' Rymer's " Foedera," vol. v. p. 777 ; in Latin. As to Boucicaut and
his more famous son, both marshals of France, see DelaviUe le Roulx, " La
France en Orient, au XIV' Siecle," Paris, 1886, vol. i. pp. 160 ff. Such
letters being delivered pretty frequently, were drawn up after a common form
like our passports. See the one given by Rym;;r in vol. vii. p. 337, a.d. 1 3 8 1 .
In November, 1392, the Earl of Derby, future Henry IV, was at Venice,
and set out thence to go to the Holy Land. He had letters for the Republic
from Albert IV, Duke of Austria, and the Great CouncU lent him a galley
for his voyage. Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, also set out from Venice
for Palestine, in February, 1398-9. He was the bearer of a letter from
Richard II to the Venetian Senate. " Calendar of State Papers ... at
Venice," ed. Rawdon Brown, p. Ixxxi.
^ " Historical Papers from the Northern Registers," ed. Raine, RoUs
Saries, p. 425.
3 " En celle malle fortune perdy nostre nafve I'un de ses tymons dont
elle estoit gouvernee en partie, et fut renversee nostre voille par plusieuis
fois en la marine, malgre tous les mariniers." The darkness was complete,
and they thought their end had come ; but they were saved, reaching Cyprus
where they had not intended to go. " Le Saint Voyage de Jerusalem du
Seigneur d'Anglure," ed. Bonnardot and Longnon, " Societe des Anciens
Textes Frangais," Paris, 1878,

4o6 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
provisions in plenty : a hundred chickens, twenty sheep,
two oxen, much good red wine and good white bread.
Then he asked them to his Court, where they were delight
fully entertained by him, by the queen, and their four
sons and five daughters. Being himself a great huntsman,
James asked them to go hunting with him, a pleasant
offer after so many trials, and one not to be refused.
Combats, hunts, storms, encounters of all sorts, in
a word, adventure, were thus associated with the idea of
the voyage, the holiness of which sometimes disappeared
in the midst of so many profane incidents. Well may
one wonder whether Saint James was the real attraction,
for a De Werchin, Seneschal de Hainaut, who, about to
start on a pilgrimage to the shrine of this saint, in 1402,
would make it publicly known that, " in the name of God,
of our Lord St. George, and of his own lady," he would
accept during his whole journey the friendly combat of
arms with any knight for whom he should not have to
turn from his road more than 20 leagues. He announced
his itinerary beforehand, so that any one might make
ready.' The strange man, Jean de Bourgogne by name, who
chose to sign his book of travels " Jean de Mandeville," ^
' " Chronique de Monstrelet," bk. i. chap. vUi.
^ The voyages called " Mandeville's Voiage and Travaile " were
assuredly written in the fourteenth century in French, then were translated
e.g. into Latin and English. Only the portion relating to Egypt, Palestine,
and Syria, may have been founded on a real journey. The article
" MandeviUe," by Mr. E. B. Nicholson and Colonel Yule in " The
Encyclopsedia Britannica " ; a paper, " Untersuchungen iiber Johann von
Mandeville und die Quelle seiner Reiseschreibung," Berlin, 1888 (printed in
" Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde," bd. xxiU. p. 177), and Mr. G. F.
Wamer's " The Buke of John Maundevil," being the travels of Sir John
Mandeville, Kt. 1322-56," Roxb. Club, 1889, fol., with the French and
English texts ; the notice by the same on Mandeville in the " Dictionary of
National Biography," notices by H. Cordier in his " Bibliotheca Sinica "
and in " Revue Critique," Oct. 26, 1 891, represent the actual state of the
question. EngUsh text in modem spelling, ed. Pollard, London, 1900.
Earliest dated MS., a French one in the National Library, Paris, a.d. 1371 ;

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 407
gives somewhat similar reasons to explain why he under
took his journey to the East in 1322 through perilous
seas and countries — or rather, according to modern dis
coveries — through the books of his library. He started,
or, anyhow, he studied and wrote, partly, says he, to
sanctify himself, partly to know the world and its wonders,
and to be able to speak of them ; for many persons, he
observes, are much pleased with hearing the marvels of
distant regions described. The reason he publishes
his impressions is, first, because numbers of people like
stories of the Holy Land, and find great consolation and
comfort in them ; and, secondly, to make a guide, in
order that small companies or caravans, like that of
Boucicaut and others, may profit by his knowledge.
His ideas as to the road to be followed are not unreason
able. Thus, " to go the direct way " from England to
Palestine, he advises the following itinerary : France,
Burgundy, Lombardy, Venice, Famagusta in Cyprus,
Jaffa, Jerusalem. Very often people went to Jerusalem
by way of Egypt. It was a tradition of long standing
that the greater part of the difficulties concerning the
Holy Land had their root in Egypt ; many tombs of
saints also attracted the pilgrims there, so that crusaders,.
or mere pilgrims, often took that road to Jerusalem.
" Mandeville " says he himself followed this itinerary.
In 1422 Gilbert de Lannoy wrote, " at the behest of
King Henry of England, heir and Regent of France,"
that is, Henry V, a description in French of the places
through which a crusade might be led against the infidels,
for this prince, like his predecessors, continued dreaming
of a crusade. Lannoy, a practical soldier and diplomat,
who speaks only of what he has seen, gives a detailed
account of all towns, stating which are protected by walls,
the identification of Mandeville with Jean de Bourgogne, alias " a la Barbe,"
or "ad Barbam," a physician of Liege, who died there in 1372, seems
certain,

4o8 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
towers and ditches ; he notices the Venetians' warehouses
for cotton at Acre, and the presence at Beirut of a great
number of Christian merchants, Venetians, Genoese,
Greeks, and others. He carefully mentions what sorts
of provisions in wood, water, etc., may be found in each
part of the country, in what plains an army can be easily
arrayed, in what ports a fleet shall be safe. He pays the
greatest attention to Egypt, and describes its several
cities : " Item. There is Cairo, the chief town of Egypt,
on the river Nile which comes from Paradise." ' But the
crusade, in anticipation of which he wrote, never took
place, and the next military expedition to reach Syria
through Egypt was destined to be a French one, headed
by that extraordinary pilgrim, Bonaparte.
Besides his account of a journey to Egypt, Palestine,
Syria, Central Asia, and China, " Mandeville " gives a
description of a number of countries peopled by imaginary
monsters. This fantastic part of his work, where he
anticipated no less famous a traveller than Gulliver
himself, did not diminish its success, quite the contrary ;
it was translated into several languages, and above
three hundred MSS. of it now remain. But we, less
confiding than our fathers, are loth to accept the excuse
he gives as a guarantee of, at least, his good faith :
" Things that are long past away from sight fall into
oblivion, and the memory of man cannot all retain and
comprehend." ^
Many books, beginning with that of Lannoy, came
after his, more practical, less fantastic, and, of course,
less famous. 3 While the renewal of the crusades became
' " A Survey of Egypt and Syria undertaken in the year 1422, by Sir
Gilbert de Lannoy, Kt., translated from a MS. in the Bodleian Library,"
"Archaeologia," vol. xxi. pp. 281, 319, giving also the French original.
Born in 1386, employed by the Duke of Burgundy, then by the King of
England, Lannoy died in 1462.
2 Sloane MS. 1464, fo. 3, British Museum.
3 And a very large quantity, beginning as early as thq fourth century (to

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 409
less and less probable, the number of individual pilgrimages
was on the increase. The word of the priest which could
no longer uproot and set on the move entire nations,
still detached here and there little groups of pious men
or adventure seekers, who went to visit the holy places
under favour of the Saracen's tolerant and practical spirit.
For the mass of them no longer set out to fight the
infidel, but to ask his permission to see Jerusalem, which
was the more readily granted that it had to be paid for.
From the fourteenth century onwards, a regular
service of transports existed at Venice for the use of pil
grims : " It is the rule," says a traveller of the fourteenth
century, " that the Venetians send every year five galleys
to the Holy Land. They all reach Beirut, which is the
port for Damascus in Syria : thence two of them bring
the pilgrims to Jaffa, which is the port for Jerusalem." '
Many particulars about this service of transports,
the purchases to make before starting, and the provisions
to take, are found in a book written in the following
century by William Wey, Fellow of Eton College, an
experienced pilgrim with a passion for such journeys.
He recommended that the price of the passage be carefully
settled before starting, and that a bed with its pillows,
sheets, etc., be procured. This was bought at Venice,
near St. Mark's, and cost three ducats ; after the journey
the whole could be sold back to the vendor for a ducat
which century belongs the " Itinerarium Burdigala Hierosolymam "), had
preceded those. See, among others, " Itinera Hierosolymitana et Descrip-
tiones Terrae Sancta," ed. Tobler and Molinier, 1879, ^- > " Itineraires a
Jerusalem, rediges en frangais aux XI% XIP et XIIP Siecles," ed. Michelant
and Raynaud, 1882, both works forming part of -the publications of the
" Societe de I'Orient Latin." One of the best among the older guide-books
was due to the French monk Bernard in the year 870. The monk, who
went by way of Egypt, is brief, accurate, matter of fact, as little emotional
as possible, discards all wonders, and is often careful to add : " asseritur,"
" dicitur." ' " Le Saint Voyage de Jerusalem du Seigneur d'Anglure," ed, Bonnar
dot and Longnon, 1878, p. 99,

410 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
and a half : " Also when ye com to Venyse ye schal
by a bedde by seynt Markys cherche ; ye schal have a
fedyr bedde, a matres, too pylwys, too peyre schetis and
a qwylt, and ye schal pay iij dokettis ; and when ye com
ayen, bryng the same bedde to the man that ye bowt hit
of and ye schal have a doket and halfe ayen, thow hyt be
broke and worne." ' Such settled customs and fixed
prices show better than anything else the frequency of
the intercourse.
William Wey is as obliging for his traveller as are
modern guide-book makers ; he devises mnemonics of
names to remember, a vocabulary of the Greek words
most important to know, and ready-made questions which
our manuals still repeat in more correct language :
" Good morrow. Calomare.
Welcome. Calosertys.
Tel me the way. Dixiximo strata.
Gyff me that. Doys me tutt.
Woman, haue ye goyd wyne ? Geneca esse calocrasse ?
Howe moche ? Posso ? "
He does not omit a sentence which must have been, and
still is, of especially frequent use : " I understond the
not — Apopon kystys." Wey also gives a table of the rate
of exchange for moneys from England to Venice, Crete,
Rhodes, Cyprus, and Syria ; and a programme for the
employment of time, as now very parsimoniously distri
buted ; he only allows " thirteen or fourteen days " to see
' " The Itineraries of WilUam Wey, FeUow of Eton College, to Jeru
salem, A.D. 1458 and A.D. 1462, and to Saint James of Compostela, a.d.
1456." London, 1857, Roxburghe Club, pp. 5, 6. In his first journey to
Palestine, duly " consecratus ad modum peregrinorum," Wey started from
Venice with a band of 197 pilgrims, embarked on two galleys. Born about
1407, a graduate of Oxford, Wey became after the last of his journeys an
Augustinian monk at Edington, Wiltshire, and died there in 1476. He
wrote his Itineraries " rogatus a devotis viris " (p. 56) ; the test in Latin,
the " prevysyotm " for fayellers in EngUsh,

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 411
everything and start back again, specifying what should
be seen each day. Lastly, he gives a complete list of the
towns to be traversed, with the distance from one to the
other, a map of the Holy Land with all the remarkable
places duly inscribed thereon,' a considerable catalogue
of the indulgences to be gained, and full details as to what
is sacred or curious in Palestine, or on the way thither,
not forgetting the dogs at Rhodes, who keep watch at
night outside the castle, know perfectly how to distinguish
a Turk from a Christian, and who, if one of their number
" sleeps instead of taking his watch at night outside the
castle, kill him themselves," - so great is their detestation
of a slacker.
Wey foresaw all the disagreeables to which the boorish-
ness of the captain of the galley might subject you ; he
recommends engaging a berth in the highest part of
the boat, " for in the lawyst [stage] under hyt is ryght
smolderyng hote and stynkynge." 3 You must not pay
more than forty ducats from Venice to Jaffa, food included,
and should stipulate that the captain stop at certain ports
to take in fresh provisions. He is bound to give you
hot meat at dinner and supper, good wine, pure water,
and biscuit ; but it is well besides to take provisions for
private use, for even at the captain's table there is great
risk of having bad bread and wine. " For thow ye schal
' Pages 102— 116. Such a map is exhibited in one of the glass cases
of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It is probable, but not quite sure, that
this is really the map of William Wey, the one he calls " mappa mea " in
his book. It has been reproduced in fac-simile : " Map of the Holy
Land, illustrating the Itineraries of W. Wey, Roxburghe Club, 1867."
It is seven feet in length and sixteen and a half inches in breadth. See
also : " De passagiis in Terram Sanctam," edit. G. M. Thomas, Venice,
1879, foUo, " Societe de I'Orient Latin." This work contains e.xtracts
from a " Chronologia magna," compiled in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, with maps and plans, one especially of Jerusalem and
adjoining places.
" P- 95-
3 " A good preuysyoun," " Itineraries," p. 4. ,

4X2 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
be at the tabyl wyth yowre patrone, notwythstondynge,
ye schal oft tyme have nede to yowre vytelys, bred, chese,
eggys, frute, and bakyn, wyne, and other, to make yowre
collasyun ; for sum tyme ye schal have febyl bred, wyne
and stynkyng water, meny tymes ye schal be ful fayne
to ete of yowre owne." It would even be prudent to
take some poultry : " Also by yow a cage for half a dozen
of hennys or chekyn to have with yow in the galey ; "
half a bushel of seed to feed them must not be forgotten,
nor what you will want to fry your own bacon and drink
your wine : " Also take with you a lytyl cawdren and
fryyng pan, dysches, platerrys, sawserys of tre (wood),
cuppys of glas, a grater for brede and such nessaryes."
You must also have remedies, " confortatyvys, laxatyvys,
restoraty vys, " saffron, pepper, spices.'
On arrival at a port it is well to leap ashore one of
the first, in order to get served before others, and not to
have the leavings ; this counsel of practical selfishness
often recurs. On land heed must be taken as to the
fruits : " beware of dyverse frutys, for they be not acordyng
to youre complexioun, and they gender a blody fluxe
(dysentery), and yf an Englyschman have that sykenes
hyt ys a marvel and scape hyt but he dye thereof."
Once in Palestine, one must be careful about robbers ;
beware of Saracens coming to talk familiarly with you :
" Also take goyd hede of yowre knyves and other smal
thynges that ye ber apon yow, for the Sarsenes wyl go
talkyng wyth yow and make goyd chere, but they wyl
stele fro yow that ye have and they may." At Jaffa
you must bestir yourself and be quick, in order to have
the best donkey, " Also when ye schal take yowre asse
at port Jaffe, be not to longe behynde yowre felowys ;
for and ye com by tyme ye may chese the beste mule,
other asse, for ye schal pay no more fore the best then
for the worst. And ye must yeve youre asman curtesy
I " A good preuysyoun," " Itineraries," pp. 5, 6.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 413
a grot." ' This last recommendation shows the high
antiquity of " pourboires," one of the best preserved of
mediseval traditions. At last the caravan leaves the
seaside and proceeds towards the Holy City ; and then
it is prudent not to straggle too far from your companions
for fear of evildoers.
Worthy of notice is the fact that these visits to the
Holy Land were in great part performed on donkeys ;
knights themselves did not disdain mounting these modest
animals : " At this said inn did we dismount from our
asses," says the narrator of the travels of the lord of
Anglure, who, as we have seen, visited Jerusalem at the
end of the fourteenth century ; which tends to show that
if there was, as there still is, some danger of attacks by
robbers, it was not very serious. If there had been any
chance of real fight knights would hardly have ventured
getting into it on donkey-back. In fact, many of those
reports of travels in the Holy Land give the impression
of mere tourists' excursions, and what comes out most
clearly from them is the before-mentioned spirit of toler
ance, coupled with the spirit of profit, displayed by the
Saracen. He did not forbid the entry into Palestine of
all these pilgrims, who often came as spies and enemies,
and he let their troops do very much as they liked, provided
they did not forget to pay.^ The companions of the lord
' Ibid. The same scramble for asses is going on even now in Palestine
and Egypt, and modern " Saracens " are careful to ingratiate themselves
with the traveller by addressing to him a few words in the language of his
supposed nationality ; one such at the foot of the Pyramids some years ago,
would keep repeating to us, as a sesame for our purses, these three magic
Words : " Bonaparte, quarante siecles." We had not, however, to deplore
the disappearance of any " knyves and other smal thynges."
= William Wey and his companions pay to the " Saracen lords " fifteen
ducats : " Et sic in Terra Sancta fuimus xiij diebus, pro quibus solvimus
pro conductu nostro dominis Saracenis xv ducatus." But there were two
rival sultans at war with each other, each claiming the Holy Land ; and just
as the pilgrims were about to leave, the one of those potentates whom they
had not paid got the upper hand, and they had to give fifty ducats to his nev/

414 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
of Anglure, and half a century later of William Wey, go
where they will ; returning when it is convenient, and
making plans of excursions beforehand as they would do
at present. They admire the beauty of the "muscas " or
mosques, the quaint appearance of the vaulted streets with
light coming from apertures at the top of the vault, and
with shops for Saracen merchants on both sides, in other
words, the bazaar ; they are led by and receive explana
tions from their " drugemens ; " at certain places they
meet officers entrusted with the permit of the " Soudan,"
as to all affairs concerning foreigners : these officers are
called " consulles." They find European merchants estab
lished and doing much trade in the ports of the infidel ;
they have, in fact, nothing to fear seriously but local
wars (about which they were pretty sure to get timely
information), or possibly calamitous encounters at sea.
William Wey and his companions learn with .much uneasi
ness on their return that a Turkish fleet with dubious
purpose is ready to quit Constantinople, but happily they
do not meet it.
A comparison between the experiences of both troops
of pilgrims, the French and the English, is instructive,
precisely because they are, in so many cases, similar.
The lord of Anglure ' had no trouble in reaching Jerusalem,
being provided with the proper authorization : " Shortly
after, we started thence on foot, and with the license of
the lieutenant of the Sultan we entered the holy city of
governor of Jerusalem. " Itineraries," p. 99. The second Boucicaut going
around the holy places for the second time within a few months in 1389,
is made by the Saracens to pay again. DelaviUe le Roulx, " La France en
Orient," i. 165.
' Ogier VIII, lord of Anglure, part of whose castle on the Aube river
still remains, died about 1402. One of his companions held the pen for the
troop during the journey and wrote the account of it entitled, in the MS. at
the National Library, Paris : " Cy apres s'ensuit le contenu du saint voyage
de Jherusalem etle chemin pour aUer a S.Uncte Catherine du Mont Synay
et ainsi k Saint Anthoine et Saint Pol es loingtains desers de Egipte," 1395 ;
best ed. the above quoted one by Bonnardot and Longnon.

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 415
Jerusalem at the hour of vespers, and were all received
and lodged in the hospital where it is customary now for
pilgrims to stay." Having bought tents, they travel by
land without difficulty from Palestine to Egypt, crossing
the desert, noticing the places where Moses performed
his miracles, visiting Cairo, which deeply impresses them
by its beauty, its greatness, its gardens and monuments,
and the immense number of Saracens living there. They
go partly by water, partly on camels, observing on their
way " two great black-feathered ostriches trotting along,"
to the places where St. Anthony had lived with his " por-
cellet," and where churches and abbeys prosper under the
rule of the unmeddling Saracen. They navigate the
Nile, a large river which " comes from Paradise," and
where " live several serpents called cokatrices," otherwise
crocodiles, of which they see one " very great and
hideous " that dived into the water when they came near.
There only they have a rather narrow escape, being
attacked in their boat by " Arab robbers," and some of
their troop are wounded with arrows, but none is killed.
Needless to say that, if Rome was full of relics, there
was no want of them in Jerusalem. All the places named
in the Gospel, and some others, had been identified
with precision : " Item, continuing to go up towards
this mountain on the right hand side, there is a house
where the sweet Virgin Mary learnt at school." Near
the church of the Holy Sepulchre is a large square " with
two big stones on the one of which our Lord used to sit
when He preached to His disciples, and our Lady sat
opposite on the other." The place is shown " where
St. John the Evangelist sang mass every day in the
presence of our Lady after the Ascension of our Lord."
You may see, too, the spot where was roasted the paschal
lamb ; " even here was warmed the water with which
our Lord washed the feet of His apostles." There is
also a cave or well " where King Herod had the Innocents

4i6 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
thrown, out of spite." At Bethlehem is a church of
St. Nicholas, " in which place the sweet Virgin Mary
hid herself to draw her milk from her worthy breasts
when she would fly to Egypt. In this same church is
a marble column against which she leaned when she drew
her worthy milk, and this pillar continues moist since
the time she leaned against it, and when it is wiped, at
once it sweats again ; and in all places where her worthy
milk fell, the earth is still soft and white and has the
appearance of curded milk, and whoever likes takes of
it, out of devotion." — Hence the milk at Walsingham .''
In Egypt, too, the wonders are numerous, but many
are of a different order. Besides the churches and
hermitages there are the " granaries of Pharaoh," namely
the pyramids, which seem to the lord of Anglure and
his companions " the most marvellous thing they had
yet seen in all their travels." They are cut " in the shape
of a fine diamond," but inside they are full of animals,
who stink horribly. Mandeville, who had seen them
some years before, gives them the same origin, and utterly
discards the belief that they might have been tombs of
high personages. He mentions the hieroglyphics, about
the only thing in all his book that he does not try to
explain ; he also has a word for the grim inhabitants of
the pyramids : " Thei ben alle fulle of serpentes. And
aboven the gernerers with outen ben many scriptures
of dyverse languages. And sum men seyn that they
ben sepultures of grete Lordes, that weren somtyme ;
but that is not trewe ; for all the comoun rymour and
speche is of alle the peple there, bothe far and nere, that
thei ben the garneres of Joseph. And so fynden thei
in here scriptures and in here cronycles. On that other
partie, yif thei werein sepultures, thei scholden not ben
voyd with inne. For yee may well knowe that tombes
and sepultures ne ben not made of suche gretnesse ne of
suche highnesse. Wherfore it is not to beleve that thei

PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES 417
ben tombes or sepultures." ' This powerful mode of
reasoning did not, however, convince such sceptics as
Mariette and Maspero.
Besides the pyramids, the companions of the Lord of
Anglure notice and greatly praise the houses with their
terraces, the mosques and their " fine lamps," these same
ornamented glass lamps which, after having been admired
by our pilgrims in 1395 when they were fresh and new,
can be seen now without going so far, in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. The Egyptian animals, too, are noted
by our travellers as being very striking ; besides the
crocodiles there are the long-necked giraffes, so tall that
" they could well take their provender on the highest
lances that it is the custom now to use," and then the
elephants. A very strange beast an elephant : " It
could never bend to the ground to get its food on account
of its great height, but it has in its snout something like
a bowel, put at the further end of its snout," and this
bowel " hangs down almost to the ground," and with it
the beast " takes its food and carries it to its mouth."
He uses it also to drink, and " when he blows air through
it the noise is greater than that of any buccina," and the
sound " is terrible to those unaccustomed."
At last the time came when our pilgrims had seen
everything, and they had to wend their way homewards.
Twice did William Wey undertake the great journey,
happy to have seen, fain to see again. When he came
back to England for the last time he bequeathed to a
chapel, built on the model of the Holy Sepulchre, the
souvenirs which he had brought back, that is to say, a
stone from Calvary, another from the Sepulchre itself,
one from Mount Tabor, one from the place where the
cross stood, and other relics. As for the French troop
of pilgrims who had left Anglure-sur-Aube on July 16,
' " Voiage and Trav^Ue of Sir John Maundeville," ed, HaUjweU, 1866,
P- 52.. 27

4i8

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

1395, they came back in the following year, complete
in their numbers but for Simon de Sarrebruck, who had
died of fever in Cyprus during the journey home, and
lies interred in a church there. " And on Thursday,
the twenty-second day of June, and the day before the
eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist, in the year of
grace of our Lord, 1396, we found ourselves again dining
in Anglure."

A PILGRIMS "SIGN, ' OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM.
[Original in the British Museum.)

A BLIND BEGGAR CHEATED OF HIS DRINK BY HIS DOY
[From MS. lo E. IV.)

CONCLUSION

WE have followed the race of roamers in many
places : on the road, at the hostelry, in woods,
in taverns, in churches ; we have seen them
exercising a host of different trades, a motley crew, min
strels, buffoons, quacks, messengers, pedlars, pilgrims,
wandering preachers, beggars, friars, vagabonds of all
sorts, labourers broken loose from the soil, pardoners,
knights in search of adventure. We have accompanied
them here and there over the highroads of England, and
followed them to Rome itself, and the Holy Land ;
there we shall leave them. To the wandering class also
belong the representatives of many other professions,
such as scribes, tinkers, cobblers, masons, showers of
animals or bearwards, like those whom Villard de
Honnecourt visited one day in order to draw " al vif,"
a lion. But the more important members are those
above described.
The current of life represented by the multiplicity of
these wayfarers is powerful ; notice has been taken of the
great though not very apparent part they played in the
State. The labourer breaks the bonds which for centuries
have attached him to the manor, and henceforward means

420 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
to be the master of his own person and of his service, to
hire himself by the day if he chooses, and for a salary
corresponding to the rise in prices and to the demand
there may be for his work. The reform is an inevitable
one, which will be realized by degrees, in spite of the laws
and of the will of the authorities. There is none more
important, and its how and wherefore are to be studied
not only in the castle, but on the road and by-ways, in
the brushwood, where armed bands meet together during
church service, and on those unfrequented paths where
the false pilgrim throws down his staff to take up his tools
and look for work out of the reach of his hereditary master.
These people promote by their example and success the
emancipation which the wandering preachers justify in
their discourses, showing it to be not simply desirable,
but rightful.
The great questions of the age, social and religious,
move towards their solution, partly on the road, through
the influence of the wanderers, a direct influence from
the sincere ones, indirect from the others. Begging friars
go from door to door, pardoners grow rich, pilgrims live
by alms and by the recital of their adventures, always on
the way, always at work. W^hat is this work ? By con
stantly addressing the crowd, they in the end make them
selves known for what they are, and cause their listeners
to pass sentence upon them ; by disabusing them they
render reform inevitable. Thereby, too, will the rust and
superstition of the middle ages drop away, and another
step be made towards modern civilization.
Each of these strange types has, moreover, the advantage
of showing, very apparent in his own person, some charac
teristic side of the tastes, the beliefs, and the aspirations
of his time. Each of those groups corresponds to a need,
an eccentricity, a vice, or a merit of the nation ; through
them we may examine, as it were, and reconstitute piece
meal the souls of the men of long ago, and have those

CONCLUSION 421
men stand before us, mind and body, complete, just as the
nature of the soil may be guessed from the flora of a country.
The general impression is that the English people
then underwent one of those profound transformations
which present themselves to the historian's view Uke the
turning of a highway. Coming out from gorges and
mountains the road suddenly leads to an opening, and the
rich, sunny, fertile plain is perceived in the distance. It
has not yet been reached, many hardships are still to be
endured ; it will disappear again from sight at intervals,
but the traveller has seen it, and knows at least in what
direction to tread in order to attain it. During the age
which was then beginning the emancipated peasant was
to enrich himself in spite of fierce wars especially deadly
for the nobility, and the Commons were to be possessed
of an instrument of control over the royal power, which
would be used, according to the period, more or less well,
but which is the best one invented up to our day. The
Parliam.ent sitting at Westminster now is in its essential
elements identical with the one that, under the Plantagenets,
drew up the statutes of the kingdom. In the fourteenth
century, despite ultra severe judgments from some thinkers
of fame (an age, says Stubbs, " of heartless selfishness
and moral degradation "), mankind did not recede,
witness the host of truly modern ideas which gained a
hold on the mass of the people ; among the upper classes
under the influence of higher education and wider inter
course with foreign countries, which weakened the notion
of the immutability of custom ; among the lower classes
through the effects of abuses long experienced by men
who, though patient, were no weaklings ; ideas made
popular and rendered practical by the wayfarers, illiterate
workmen, single-hearted preachers. All those mad freaks,
all the extravagance of the religious spirit, those incessant
revolts and follies which have been noticed, were sure to
cause a reaction, and a longing for something nearer that

422 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
reign of reason which mankind, though less remote from
the goal, still continues to look for in the far distance.
On a number of questions, whether as the promoter
or the object of reform, as working man or as pardoner,
whether an unconscious instrument or not, wanderers will
always have much to teach whoever will question them.
For good or evil it may be said that they acted in mediaeval
history as " microbes," a numerous, scarcely visible, but
powerful host. They will perhaps reveal the secret of
almost incomprehensible transformations, which might have
seemed to necessitate a total overturn, like the one that
took place in France at the end of the eighteenth century,
a new or rather a first contrat social. England, for many
reasons, has not required this ; one among those reasons
is the action of the roamers which, exerting itself on a
population temperamentally steadier than many others,
more persistently resolute, and less constantly troubled by
wars on its territory, united the people and, thanks to
that union which made it strong, allowed it to snatch
in time the necessary concessions. And as, however, the
calmest changes cannot take place without some distur
bance, as also among the English there have been, in
the course of centuries, more than one bloody fray, the
nomad may perhaps end by answering his interrogator
in the words of a common proverb of certain, yet un
hackneyed wisdom, which should prevent pessimism and
lack of hope : " Le bois tortu fait le feu droit " —
Crooked log maketh straight fire.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX I
(P- 4+)
PATENT OF KING JOHN ENTRUSTING A FRENCHMAN
WITH THE COMPLETION OF LONDON BRIDGE
(1201)
" Literas patentes, etc. de edificatione et sustentatione pontis
Londinensis. Patent Roll 3° lohannis, m. 2, no. 9.
" lohannes Dei gratia rex, etc. dilectis et fidelibus suis majori
et civibus Londinensibus salutem. Attendentes qualiter circa
pontem Xanctonensem et pontem de Rupella Deus a modico tempore
sit operatus per sollicitudinem fidelis clerici nostri Isenberti, magistri
scolarum Xanctonensium, viri utique literati et honesti, ipsum de
consilio venerabilis patris in Christo H. Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi '
et aliorum, rogavimus et monuimus et etiam coegimus ut pro vestra
et multorum utilitate, de ponte vestro faciendo curam habeat dili-
gentem. Confidimus enim in Domino, quod idem pons tam neces
sarius vobis et omnibus transeuntibus, ut scitis, per ejus industriam,
faciente Domino, poterit in proximo consumari. Et ideo volumus
et concedimus quod salvo jure nostro et conservata indempnitate
civitatis Londinensis, census edificiorum quas super pontem prasdictum
idem magister scolarum faciet fieri sint imperpetuum ad eundem
pontem reficiendum et operiendum et sustentandum. Quia igitur
idem pons tam necessarius sine vestro et alaorum auxilio perfici
non poterit, mandamus vobis, exhortantes quatinus memoratum
Isenbertum et suos pro vestra utilitate pariter et honore sicut
' The famous Hubert Walter (or Walter Hubert) who had accom
panied King Richard to Palestine and crowned King John ; archbishop
from 1193 to 1205 ; for a number of years, as much the ruler of England
as those kings themselves. His tomb in Canterbury Cathedral has been
identified in our days. 425

426 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
decuerit benigne recipiatis et honoretis in hiis quas dicta sunt,
consilium et auxilium vestrum eidem unanimiter impendentes.
Quicquid enim boni et honoris eidem Isenberto feceritis, nobis
factum reputare debetis. Si quis vero eidem Isenberto vel suis
in aliquo foris fecerit, quod non credimus, vos illud eisdem facialis,
quam citius ad vos pertinet emendari. Teste meipso, apud
Molinellum, xviii. die Aprilis.
" Sub eadem forma scribitur omnibus fidelibus per regnum
Angliae constitutis."
Hearne, at the end of " Liber niger Scaccarii," London, 1771,
vol. i. p. 470* ; Thomas Duffus Hardy, " Rotuli Literarum Patent-
ium in Turri Londinensi asservati," London, 1835, fol. p. 9.

II
(P- 53)
PETITION CONCERNING AN OLD BRIDGE, WHOSE ARCHES
WERE TOO LOW AND TOO NARROW TO PERMIT
BOATS TO PASS
" Unto the ryght wise and discrete comons of this present
Parlement ; besecheth mekely the comons off the countees of
York, Lincoln, Notyngham, and Derby ; That whereas ther is,
and of longe tyme hath been, an usuall and a commune passage
fro dyvers and many parties of the seid countees unto the citees
of York, Hull, Hedon, Holdernes, Beverley, Barton, and Grymesby,
and so forth, by the hie see, by the costes, unto London and elles
where, with all maner of shippes charged with wolle, leed, stone,
tymbre, vitaille, fewaille, and many other marchandises, by a streme
called the Dike, in the counte of York, that daiely ebbith and floweth :
over whiche streem ys made a brigge of tymbre called Turnbrigg,
in the parisshe of Snayth in the same counte, so lowe, so ner the
streem, so narrowe and so strayte in the archees, that ther is, and of
long tyme hath been a right perilous passage, and ofte tymes perishinge
of dyvers shippes ; and atte every tyme of creteyne ' and abundaunce
of water, ther may no shippes passe under the seid brigge, by the
space of half a yere or more, and also a grete partie of the countees
to the seid ryver ajonyng, is yerely by the space of xx" myles and more
surrownded, by cause of the lowenes and straitenes of the said brigge,
to the grete hurt and damage as well to the kyng in his customes
' Creteyne, increase, rising flood ; in French, crue.

APPENDIX 427
and subsidys, that shuld growe to him of the seid marchaundises,
chargeable with suche diverse, as to the seid shires, countres, cites
and burghes, and the inhabitants of theim. . . .
" Please hit unto your right wise discretions, consideryng the
premisses, to pray and beseche the kyng our soverayn lord to graunte
. . . that hit shall be lefuUe to what sum ever person or persons
of the seid shires, that will atte theire owne costages take away the
seid brigge, and ther with and profiles therof, and in othir wise,
newe edifie and bilde anothir brigge there, lengere in lengthe by
the quantite of v. yerdes called the kynges standard, and in hieght
a yerd and a half by the same yerd heigher then the seid brigge that
stondes ther nowe, aswell for passage of all maner shippes comyng
therto, and voidaunce of water under the seid brigg as for passage
of man, best and carriage over the seid newe brigge so to be made,
with a draght lef ' contenyng the space of iiij fete called Paules fete
in brede, for the voidying thorugh of the mastes of the shippes passinge
under the seid new brigg ; and that every shipmen that wol passe
under the seid brigge with their shippes, may laufully lifte up and
close the seid lef att their pleser ; and that the mayster of every
shippe paie for every liftyng of the seid lef id. to the lord of the soille
for the tyme beyng . . . for the lofe of Godd and in waye of
charite. . . .
" Responsio. Le roy de I'advys et assent de lez seignurs espirituelx
et temporalx et lez communes esteantz en cest present parlement,
ad graunte tout le contenue en icell petition en toutz pointz."
" Rolls of Parliament," vol. v. p. 43 ; 20 Henry VI, a.d.
1442. Ill
(p. 62)
LONDON BRIDGE AND ITS MAINTENANCE
At the end of his edition of the " Liber niger Scaccarii," London,
1 77 1, vol. i. pp. 470*-478*, Hearne printed a series of curious Letters
Patent relating to London Bridge. That of John, commending
Isembert to the city, is given above (Appendix I.). There follow,
an order of John applying the tax paid by foreign merchants established
in London to the support of the bridge (Close Roll, 15 John, m. 3) ;
a patent of Henry III addressed "to the brothers and chaplains
of the chapel of St. Thomas on London Bridge, and to the other
I A " movable " part, just for the passage of masts.

428 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
persons living on the same bridge," to inform them that the convent
of St. Catherine's Hospital, near the Tower, would receive the
revenues and would take charge of the repairs of the bridge for
five years (Patent 50 Hen. Ill m. 43, No. 129) ; grant of the
same revenues and charge to the queen for six years (54 Hen. Ill
m. 4, No. 11); patent of Edward I (January, 1281), ordering
a general collection throughout the kingdom to ward off the danger
resulting from the bad condition of the edifice (9 Ed. I m. 27) ;
patent of the same king ordering the levy of an extraordinary tax
on account of the catastrophe which, after all, had happened.
" Rex majori suo London' salutem. Propter subitam ruinam
pontis London' vobis mandamus quod associatis vobis duobus vel
tribus de discretioribus et legalioribus civibus civitatis praedictae,
capiatis usque ad parliamentum nostrum post Pasch' prox' futur',
in subsidium reparationis pontis predicti, consuetudinem subscriptam,
videlicet, de quolibet homine transeunte aquam Thamisise ex trans-
verso ex utraque parte pontis London' de London' usque Suthwerk
et de Suthwerk usque London', occasione defectus reparationis pontis
predicti, unum quadrantem, de quolibet equo sic transeunte ibidem
unum denarium, et de quolibet summagio sic ibidem transeunte
unum obolum. Set volumus quod aliquid ibidem hac occasione
interim capiatur nisi in subsidium reparationis pontis supra dicti.
In cujus, etc. Teste rege apud Cirencestr', iiij° die Februanj "
(10 E. I m. 18).
The same year, on 6th July, the king prolonged the term during
which this exceptional tax should be levied to three years (p. 476*) ;
he also, " understanding that it would hurt neither himself nor the
city," granted to the mayor and commonalty of London three empty
spaces, one near the wall of the churchyard " de Wolchurch," the
two others near the wall of St. Paul's churchyard, for them to build
thereon and let the buildings for the benefit of the bridge (10 Ed. I
m. 11). Then, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign, Edward I
established a detailed tariff of the tolls which all merchandise passing
under or over the bridge should pay during the next three years
(34 Ed. I m. 25). Even this was not enough, as we find Edward II
asking all the archbishops, bishops, rectors and other ecclesiastical
authorities of the kingdom to well receive the wardens of London
Bridge or their delegates and allow them to piously persuade the
people to make offerings for the repair of the bridge : " Eos populum
ibidem piis suasionibus excitare et suarum elemosinarum subsidia
ad reparationem Pontis predicti caritative invocare permittatis."
(14 Ed. II pt. i. m. 19, p. 477*).

APPENDIX 429
IV
(P- 65)
INQUESTS RELATING TO THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
A great many examples of these inquests may be found in the
collection published by the Record Commission, " Placitorum in
domo capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservatorum abbreviatio," Lon
don, 181 1, fol. Here are references to some of the more interesting
ones :
Case where an abbot is explicitly obliged, as one of the conditions
of his tenure, to repair a bridge, p. 205 ; 11 and 12 Ed. I.
Agreement between the abbot of Croyland and the prior of
Spalding for the construction of several bridges, p. 205 ; 12 Ed. I.
Discussion as to the building of a bridge at Chester, p. 209 ;
13 Ed. I.
Refusal by the abbot of Coggeshall to repair a bridge : " Per
juratores, Abbas de Coggeshale non tenetur reparare pontem de
Stratford inter Branketre et Coggeshale, eo quod de tempore memorie
non fuit ibidem alius pons quam quedam planchea de borde super
quam omnes transeuntes salvo et secure transire potuerunt," p. 303 ;
I Ed. II.
Measures taken to constrain the inhabitants of two towns to
repair the bridges of a highway in their neighbourhood : " Dis-
tringantur villate de Aswardeby et Skredington ad reparandum
pontes in pupplica strata inter Lafford et ecclesiam de Stowe juxta
inquisicionem inde captam anno Ivi. Henrici iij. coram Gilberto
de Preston et sociis suis in comitatu Lincolniensi itinerantibus, per
breve ejusdem regis," p. 305 ; 2 Ed. II.
Finding out of the person who is to repair Chesford bridge,
p. 314 ; 6 Ed. II.
Refusal of the abbot of Fountains to repair Bradeley bridge,
p. 318 ; 7 Ed. II.
Hamode Morston's case, p. 328 ; 11 Ed. II, referred to above,
p. 64. Repair of the bridges of Exhorne, Hedecrone, and Hekinby,
in the county of Kent, p. 339 ; 15 Ed. II.
Inquest as to Claypole bridge. It is found that the inhabitants
of Claypole are bound to repair it : " Ideo preceptum est vicecomid
Lincolniensi quod distringat homines predicte ville de Claypole ad
reparandum et sustentandum pontem predictum in forma predicta,"
p. 350 ; 18 Ed. II, etc.

430 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
V
(p. 92)
THE KING'S JOURNEYS— PETITIONS AND STATUTES
CONCERNING THE ROYAL PURVEYORS
" Nullus vicecomes vel ballivus noster vel aliquis alius capiat
equos vel carettas alicujus pro cariagio faciendo, nisi reddat hbera
tionem antiquitus statutam ; scilicet pro caretta ad duos equos decem
denarios per diem, et pro caretta ad tres equos quatuordecim denarios
perdiem." Magna Charta, first confirmation by Henry III, art.
23, A.D. 1216. "Statutes of the Realm," 1810, vol. i. p. 15.
This article is found in successive confirmations of the great
charter ; the germ of it was contained in John's original text,
of 1 21 5, art. 30.
" Item pur ceo qe le poeple ad este moult greve de ceo qe les
bledz, feyns, bestaill, et autre manere de vitailles et biens des gentz
de mesme le poeple, ont este pris, einz ces houres . . . dont nul
paiement ad este fait, . . ." etc. Preamble to the statute 4 Ed. Ill,
ch. iii. "Statutes of the Realm," a.d. 1330. See also statute
36 Ed. Ill, ch. ii.
Petition of the Commons, 25 Ed. Ill, 1351-52 ("Rolls of
Parliament," vol. ii. p. 242) : " Item prie la commune qe la oU
avant ces heures les botillers nostre seigneur le roi et lour deputez
soleient prendre moult plus de vyns a I'oeps le roi qe mestier ne fust ;
desqueux ils mettont les plus febles a I'oeps le roi et les meliours k
lour celers demesnes a vendre, et le remenant relessont a eux desqueux
ils les pristerent, pur grantz fyns a eux faire pur chescun tonel, a grant
damage et empoverissement des marchantz. . . ."
The inhabitants of the counties of Dorset and Somerset complain
in the same way that the sheriff of these counties had taken of them
" cynk centz quarters de furment et trois centz bacouns, a I'oeps
le roi, come il dist, et il ne voillast pur sa graunt meistrie ct seigneurie
allower pur vintz quarteres fors qe pur sesse quarters, et c'est assaver
bussell de dit blee fors que dis deniers, la oil il vendist apres pur xv
deniers. Par quey vos liges gentz sount grauntement endamage et
vous, chier seigneur, n'estes servy des blees et des bacounes avaunt-
ditz. ..." 4 Ed. Ill, 1331, "Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii.
p. 40. Petition of the Commons to the Good Parliament of 1376 :

APPENDIX 431
" Item prie la commune qe come le roi de temps passe et ses pro
genitours, nobles princes, soleient avoir lour cariage, c'est assaver
chivalx, charietz et charettes pur servir leur hostiel : et ore les
purveours de I'hostel nostre dit seigneur le roi pur defaut de sa propre
cariage et de bone governance prenont chivalx, charietz et charettes
des povres communes, la environ par x leukes oii le roi tient son
hostel, si bien des gentz de loigne pays par xxiiii leukes ou lx passantz
par la chymyne come des gentz demurrantz en mesme le pays, en
grande arrerissement et poverisement des dites communes. . . ."
" Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 351.
Complaint of the clergy at being subjected to the exactions
of the purveyors (1376) : " Item provisores et ministri regis pro
provisionibus regiis faciendis feodum et loca ecclesiastica, invitis viris
ecclesiasticis seu eorum custodibus non intrent, nee animalia aliaque
res et bona inde auferant, prout fecerint et faciunt nunc indies, contra
ecclesiasticam libertatem et constitutiones sanctorum patrum et
statuta regni edita in hac parte. Nee in via extra feoda et loca
predicta predictorum virorum cariagium carectasve capiant vel
arrestent. " Resp. Le roi le voet."
" Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 358

VI
(p. 112)
THE RECURRENCE OF LEET-DAYS AND VISITS OF
JUSTICES
The Commons petition as follows the Good Parliament of
1376 : " Item ou de ancien temps ad este custume qe les presentours
dussent presenter les articles du lete et de vewe de frank plegg tan
soulement deux foitz par an, ... les baillifs avaunt ditz fount
les povres gentz et les husbandes de pais, qeux dussent travailer en
leur labours et husbandriez et pur le commune profit, venir de trois
semaignes en trois a lour wapentachez et hundredez, par colour de
presentement avoir, et rettent leur labours et leur husbanderiez au
terre, sinoun q'ils leur veullent doner tiels ransons et fyns q'ils ne
purront sustener ne endurer. . . .
" Resp. II y ad estatutz suffisamment."
" Rolls of Parliament," 50 Ed. Ill, vol. ii. p. 357-
Again, the Commons having pointed out that the visits of the

432 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
justices in eyre are a very great cause of trouble and expense to the
people in time of war, the king suppresses the visits of those magistrates
while the war lasts, except when any " horrible " case may occur.
" Item priont les communes au roi leur seigneur q'il ne grante
en nulle partie de roialme eire ne trailbaston durante la guerre, par
queux les communes purront estre troblez ne empoveres, fors qe
en horible cas.
" Resp. Le roi le voet."
" Rolls of Parliament," vol. ii. p. 305, 45 Ed. Ill, 1371.

VII
(P- 115)
THE DRESS OF THE WORLDLY MONK
According to the Council of London (1342) : ". . . Militari
potius quam clerical! habitu induti superior!, scilicet brevi seu stricto,
notabiliter tamen et excessive latis, vel longis manicis, cubitos non
tegentibus [tangentibus in Labbe] sed pendulis, crinibus cum [two
words not in Labbe] furrura vel sandalo revolutis, et ut vulgariter
dicitur, reversatis, et caputiis cum tipettis miras longitudinis, barbisque
prolixis incedere, et suis digitis annulos indifferenter portare publice,
ac zonis stipatis pretiosis mirae magnitudinis supercingi, et bursis
cum imaginibus variis sculptis, amellatis [annellatis, L.] et deauratis,
ad ipsas patenter cum cultellis, ad modum gladiorum pendentibus,
caligis etiam rubeis, scaccatis et viridibus, sotularibusque rostratis
et incisis multimode, ac croperiis [propriis, L.] ad sellas, et cornibus
ad colla pendentibus, epitogiis aut clocis [this word not in L.j furratis,
uti patenter ad oram, contra sanctiones canonicas temere non verentur,
adeo quod a laicis vix aut nulla patet distinctio clericorum." Wilkins'
"Concilia Magnae Britanniae," London, 1737, vol. ii. p. 703;
also in Labbe, " Sacrosancta Concilia," year 1 342, vol. xxv. col.
1170. According to the Council of York (1367) : " Nonnulli . . .
vestes publice deferre prassumpserunt deformiter decurtatas, medium
tibiarum suarum, seu genua nullatenus attingentes ... ad jactantiam
et suorum corporum ostentationem." Labbe, ibid, vol, xxvi. col.
467-8,

APPENDIX 433
VIII
(p. 120)
EXACTIONS OF CERTAIN NOBLEMEN WHEN TRAVELLING
Petitions of the Commons, " Rolls of Parliament," vol. i. p. 290
(8 Ed II), A.D. 1 314 : "Item par \k oh asquns grantz seignurs de
la terre passent parmi le pays, ils entrent en maners et lieus de Seint
Eglise et des autres, et pernent saunz conge le seignur et les baillifs
gardeyns de meisme les leus, et encontre lour volunte, ceo q'il voillent
saunz rien paer encontre la lei et les ordenaunces, non pas eaunz
regard a I'escomenge (excommunication) done encontre tutz tels.
Et si homme les devi rien, debrisent les eus par force, et pernent et
emportent ceo qe beal lour est, et batent les ministres et destruent
les biens, plus qe il ne covendreit, et autres grevouses depiz ultrages
fount. " Item il prenent charettes et chivaux de fair lour cariages k
lour voluntez saunz rien paer et des queux nientefoitz james n'est
faite restoraunce a ceux qi les devient ; ne il n'osent suire ne pleindre
pur le poair de diz seignur qar s'il le facent ils sont honiz ou en corps
ou en chateux ; par quoi ladite comuneaute prie qe remedie soit
fait en tels ultrages."
IX
(p. 130)
PASSAGE OF THE HUMBER IN A FERRY
" Ad peticionem hominum de Estriding petenc' remedium super
nimia solucione exacta ad passagium de Humbr' ultra solitum modum."
The king directs the opening of an inquest, with power to the com
missioners to re-establish things in their prestine condition. " Rolls
of Parliament," i. p. 202, 35 Ed. I, 1306.
Another petition under Edward ll : "A nostre seigneur le
[roi] et a son consail se pleint la comunaute de sa terre qe par la oh
homme soleit passer Humbre entre Hesel et Barton, homme a chival
pour dener, homme a pee pur une maele, qe ore sunt il, par extorsion,
mis a duble ; et de ceo priunt remedi pur Dieu." The king, in
reply, orders that the masters of the ferry shall not take more than
formerly : "vel quod significent causam quare id facere noluerint."
Ibid., p. 291 ; 8 Ed. II, 1314-5. 28

434 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
X
(pp. 165 and 171)
THE RIGHT OF SANCTUARY
Examples of entries in the Durham sanctuary register : " Mem
orandum quod vj die mensis octobris, A° D' m. cccc lxx vii°
Willielmus Rome et Willielmus Nicholson parochiae de Forsate,
convolarunt ad ecclesiam cath. Sancti Cuthberti Dunelm., ubi inter
caetera pro felonia per eosdem commissa et publice confessata, in,
de, et pro occisione Willielmi Aliand, per eosdem antea occisi, pecierunt
a venerabilibus et religiosis viris dominis Thoma Haughton sacrista
ipsius ecclesiae et Willielmo Cuthbert magistro Galileas ibidem,
fratribus et commonachis ejusdem ecclesias, immunitatem ecclesiae,
juxta libertates et privilegia gloriosissimo confessori Sancto Cuthberto
antiquitus concessa, favorabiliter eis concedi, et per pulsacionem
unius campanas, ut est moris, favorabiliter obtinuerunt. Ibidem
praesentibus, videntibus et audientibus, discretis viris Willielmo
Heghyngton, Thoma Hudson, Johanne Wrangham, et Thomi
Strynger, testibus ad praemissa vocatis specialiter et requisitis."
" Sanctuarium Dunelmense," ed. J. Raine, Surtees Society ; London,
1827, No. V.
On the question of sanctuaries the councils are explicit :
" Firmiter prohibemus ne quis fugientes ad ecclesiam, quos ecclesia
debet tueri, inde violenter abstrahat, aut ipsos circa ecclesiam
obsideat, vel eisdem substrahat victualia." Concilium provinciale
Scoticanum, A.D. 1 225, in Wilkins' "Concilia Magnas Britannia?,"
London, 1737, vol. i. p. 616.
As shown by the reports of cases in the Year Books, good care
was to be taken by the refugee to flee to a church duly " dedicated
by a bishop." Here is a case of the time of Edward I : —
" Quid[a]m captus fuit pro latrocinio, et ductus coram justiciariis
et inculpatus, dixit : Domine, ego fui in ecclesia de N. et dehinc
vi abstractus, unde imprimis peto juris beneficium quod mittar
retro unde ibi fui vi abstractus. — Justiciarius. Nos dicimus quod
ecclesia ilia nunquam fuit dedicata per episcopum. — Priso. Sic,
domine. — Justiciarius. Inquiratur per duodecim : — Qui dixerunt
quod ilia ecclesia nunquam fuit dedicata per episcopum. — Justiciarius.
Modo oportet te respondere. — Priso. Sum bonus et fidelis : ideo
de bono et malo pono, etc. (formula of submission to the decision
of a jury, patria). — Duodecim nominati exiverunt ad deliberandos

APPENDIX 435
(«V)." " Year Books," edited by A. Horwood, 1863, vol. i. p. 541,
Rolls Series. The final result is not given. The Year Books not
infrequently give accounts of cases where the right of sanctuary
is invoked by mere thieves as ready as any to avail themselves of the
privilege. The abuses resulting from the right of sanctuary, especially
with reference to St. Martin's le Grand in London, are described
as follows in one of the Commons' petitions : " Item prient les
csmmunes, coment diverses persones des diverses estatz, et auxi
apprentices et servantz des plusours gentz, si bien demurrantz en
la citee de Loundres et en les suburbes d'icell, come autres gentz
du roialme al dite citee repairantz, ascuns en absence de lour meistreSj
de jour en autre s'enfuyent ove les biens et chatelx de lour ditz mestres
a le college de Seint Martyn le Grant en Loundres, a I'entent de
et sur mesmes les biens et chateux illeoqes vivre a lour voluntee
saunz duresse ou execution du ley temporale sur eux illeoqes ent
estre faite, et la sont ils resceux et herbergeez, et mesmes les biens
et chateux par les ministres du dit college al foitz seiseez et pris come
forffaitz a le dit college. Et auxi diverses dettours as plusours
marchantz, si bien du dite citee, come d'autres vaillantz du roialme,
s'enfuyent de jour en autre al dit college ove lour avoir a y demurrer
a I'entent avaunt dit. Et ensement plusours persones au dit college
fueez et la demurrantz, pur lour faux lucre, forgent, fount et escrivent
obligations, endentures, acquitances, et autres munimentz fauxe?,
et illeoqes les enseallent es nouns si bien de plusours marchantz et
gentz en en la dite citee demurantz, come d'autres du dit roialme a
lour disheriteson et final destruction. . . . Et en quelle college de
temps en temps sount receptz murdres, traitours, come tonsours du
monoye del coigne le Roy, larons, robbours et autres diverses felouns
malfaisours et destourbours de la pees nostre seignur le roy, par jour
tapisantz et de noet issantz pur faire lour murdres, tresons, larcines,
robbories et felonies. . . . Et apres tieuz murdres, tresons, etc.,
faitz, al dit college repairent." " Rolls of Parliament," vol. iii.
p. 503, A.D. 1402.
XI
(p. 211)
A MONOPOLY OF MINSTRELSY FOR THE KING'S
(EDWARD IV) OWN MINSTRELS
" Pro Fraternitate Ministrallorum Regis " (Rymer, " Fcedera,"
24,1469). "Rex (etc.) . . . Sciatis quod ex querelosa insinuatione

436 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
dilectorum nobis Walteri Haliday, marescalli, Johannis Cliff (and
six others) ministrallorum nostrorum accepimus qualiter nonnulli,
rudes agricolae et artifices diversarum misterarum Regni nostri
Anglias, finxerunt se fore ministrallos, quorum aliqui liberatam
nostram eis minime datam portarent, seipsos etiam fingentes esse
ministrallos nostros proprios, cujus quidem liberates ac dictas artis sive
occupationis ministrallorum colore, in diversis partibus regni nostri
prasdicti, grandes pecuniarum exactiones de ligeis nostris deceptive
colligunt et recipiunt, et licet ipsi in arte vel sive occupatione ilia
minime intelligentes sive experti existant, et in diversis artibus et
operationibus diebus ferialibus sive profestis utuntur et victum suum
inde sufficienter percipiant, de loco tamen ad locum, in diebus festi-
valibus, discurrunt, et proficua ilia totaliter percipiunt, e quibus
ministralli nostri prasdicti, et casteri ministralli nostri pro tempore
existentes, in arte sive occupatione praedicta sufficienter eruditi et
instruct!, nullisque aliis laboribus, occupationibus sive misteris utentes,
vivere deberent."
For which cause, permission has been granted : " Ministrallis
nostris quod ipsi, ad laudem et honorem Dei et ut specialius exorare
teneantur pro salubri statu nostro et prascarissimae consortis nostras
Elizabethae reginas Angliae, dum agimus in humanis et pro animabus
nostris cum ab hac luce migraverimus, necnon pro anima carissimi
domini et patris nostri . . . tam in capella Beatas Marias Virginis
infra ecclesiam cathedralem sancti Pauli Londoniae, quam in libera
capella nostra regia sancti Anthonii, in eadem civitate nostra Lon
doniae, quandam fraternitatem sive gildam (quam ut accepimus
fratres et sorores fraternitatis ministrallorum regni nostri prasdicti,
retroactis temporibus inierunt . . .) stabilire, continuare et aug-
mentare ac quascumque personas, tam homines quam mulieres eis
grato animo adhasrentes, in fratres et sorores fraternitatis sive gildae
prasdictas recipere . . . possint et valeant."
And for the good of the reconstituted gild, " volumus . . . quod
nullus ministrallus regni nostri praedicti, quamvis in hujusmodi arte
sive occupatione sufficienter eruditus existat, eadem arte . . . de
castero, nisi de fraternitate sive gilda prasdicta sit et ad eandam
admissus fuerit et cum caeteris confratribus ejusdem contribuerit
aliquo modo utatur."
The beneficiaries of his monopoly will have a right to inquire
throughout the realm, " de omnibus et singulis hujusmodi personis
fingentibus se fore ministrallos," and to impose fines to be used " pro
continua et perpetua sustentatione certarum candelarum cerearum
vulgariter nuncupatarum tapers," in the before-mentioned chapels.

APPENDIX 437
XII
(P- 213)
POPULAR ENGLISH SONGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The following collections may be consulted :
" Ancient Songs and Ballads from the reign of Henry II to the
Revolution," collected by John Ritson, revised edition by W. C.
Hazlitt, London, 1877.
" Political Songs of England from the reign of John to that
of Edward II," edited by Thomas Wright ; Camden Society,
London, 1839.
" Specimens of Lyric Poetry composed in England in the reign
of Edward I," ed. Th. Wright, Percy Society, 1 842.
" Reliquias antiquas, scraps from ancient MSS. illustrating chiefly
early English literature," ed. Th. Wright and J. O. Halliwell,
2 vols. " Songs and Carols now first printed from a MS. of the xvth
Century," edited by Thomas Wright ; Percy Society, London,
" Political Poems and Songs, from Edward III to Richard III,"
edited by Thomas Wright ; Rolls Series, London, 1859, 1861.
" Political, Religious, and Love Poems," edited by F. J. FurnivaU;
Early English Text Society, London, 1866.
" Catalogue of MS. Romances in the British Museum," by
Henry L. D. Ward, vol. i., London, 1887. See as to Robin Hood
ballads, pp. 516-23.
" Bishop Percy's folio MS. — Ballads and Romances," edited by
J. W. Hales and F. J. FurnivaU, Ballad Society, London, 1867.
" The English and Scottish popular Ballads," edited by Prof
F. J. Child, Boston, U.S.A., 1882, ff.
Many satirical songs are to be found in those collections on the
vices of the times, the exaggerations of fashion, the ill government
of the king, the Lollards, the friars, the women, with some songs
in a higher key urging the king to defend the national honour and
to make war. See for example Dr. Furnivall's collection, p. 4.
In this work is printed the song referred to in our text on the death
of the Duke of Stiffolk (pp. 6-1 1] ;

438 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Here folowythe a Dyrge made hy the comons of Kent in the tyme
of ther rysynge, when Jake Cade was theyr cappitayn :
*****
Who shall execute y" fest of solempnite ?
Bysshoppis and lords, as gret reson is.
Menkes, chanons, and prestis, withall j^ clergy,
Prayeth for hym that he may com to blys.
And that nevar such anothar come aftar this
His intersectures, blessid mot they be,
And graunt them to reygne with aungellis !
For Jake Napys sowle, placebo and dirige.
" Placebo," begynieth the bisshop of Hereforthe ;
" Dilexi," quod y'^ bisshop of Chester.
XIII
(p- 314)
INDULGENCES AND THE THEORY OF THE " TREASURY "
ACCORDING TO POPE CLEMENT VI
" Quantum ergo exinde ut nee supervacua, inanis aut superflua
tantae effusionis miseratio redderetur, thesaurum militant! Ecclesiae
acquisivit, volens suis thesaurizare filiis pius pater, ut sic sit infinitus
thesaurus hominibus, quo qui usi sunt, Dei amicitiae participes sunt
effecti. Quem quidem thesaurum non in aerario repositum, non in
agro absconditum, sed per beatum Petrum coeli clavigerum, ej usque
successores, suos in terris vicarios commisit fidelibus salubriter dis-
pensandum, et propriis et rationabilibus causis, nunc pro totali,
nunc pro partial! remissione poenae temporalis pro peccatis debitas
tam generaliter quam specialiter (prout cum Deo expedire cogno-
scerent) vere poenitentibus et confessis misericorditer applicandum.
Ad cujus quidem thesauri cumulum, beatas Dei genetricis, omnium
electorum a primo justo usque ad ultimum merita adminiculum
praestare noscuntur, de cujus consumptione, seu minutione non est
aliquatenus formidandum, tam propter infinita Christi (ut praedictum
est) merita, quam pro eo quod quanto plures ex ejus applicatione
trahuntur ad justitiam, tanto magis accrescit ipsorum cumulus
meritorum." " Dictionnaire dogmatique, historique, ascetique et pratique des
indulgences," by Abbe P. Jouhanneaud, Paris, 1852, pp. 123-4,
being vol. xxvii. of Migne's " Nouvelle encyclopedic theologique,"

APPENDIX 439
XIV
(P- 321)
SERMON ACCOMPANYING THE DISPLAY OF A PAPAL BULL
(ON THE OCCASION OF THE COMING OF HENRY
OF LANCASTER)
" ' Mes bonnes gens, entendez tous ici.
Vous savez bien coment le roy banny
A, a grant tort, vostre seigneur Henry,
Et sans raison ;
Et pource j'ay fait impetracion
Au saint pere, qui est nostre patron,
Oue trestous ceulx auront remission
De leurs pechiez
De quoy oncques ilz furent entachiez,
De puis I'eure qu'ilz furent baptisiez,
Qui leur aideront tous certains en suez
Celle journee ;
Et vesenci la bulle seellee.
Que le pappe de romme la louee
M'a envoie, et pour vous tous donnee,
Mes bons amis.
Vueilliez lui done aidier ses ennemis
A conquerre, et vous en serez mis
Avecques ceux qui sont en paradis
Apres la mort.'
Lors veissiez jeune, viel, feble, et fort
Murmure faire, et par commun accort,
Sans regarder ni le droit ni le tort,
Eulx emouvoir,
Cuidant que ce c'on leur fist assavoir
Feust verite, tous le courent de voir ;
Car de sens n'ont gueres ne de savoir,
De telz y a.
L'arcevesque ce conseil cy trouva."
" French metrical history of the deposidon of King Richard II,"
by Creton, edited and translated into English by Rev. J. Webb.
"Archaeologia," t. xx. p. 310.
This speech is attributed by the chronicler to Thomas Arundel,

440 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
Archbishop of Canterbury, and is supposed to have been delivered
at the time of the landing of Henry of Lancaster in 1399
(Henry IV).
XV
(pp- 324. 327. 337)
ECCLESIASTICAL DOCUMENTS CONCERNING CHIEFLY
ENGLISH PARDONERS
Richard de Bury on the Pardoners, a.d. 1340 :
" Cum sit statutum in canone ne qui eleemosynarum quasstores
ad praedicandum aut indulgentias clero et populo insinuandum sine
literis dioecesanis aut apostolicis admittantur, literasque apostolicas
quaestoribus hujusmodi concessas ante admissionem eorum per
diocesanos examinari debeant diligenter : ex gravi tamen multorum
querela ad nostrum pervenit auditum, quod nonnulli ex hujusmodi
quaestoribus, non sine multa temeritatis audacia, motu suo proprio,
in animarum subditorum nostrorum periculum et jurisdictionis
nostrae elusionem manifestam, indulgentias populo concedunt, super
votis dispensant, et perjuriis, homicidiis, usuris et peccatis aliis, sibi
confitentes absolvunt, et male ablata, data sibi aliqua pecunias quanti-
tate, remittunt, ac alias abusiones quamplurimas faciunt et exponunt,
vobis in virtute obedientiae, firmiter inhibemus et per vos omnibus
rectoribus, vicariis et capellariis parochialibus, vestri archidiaconatus,
inhiberi volumus et mandamus, ne aliqui quasstores hujusmodi,
cujuscumque extiterint conditionis, ad praedicandum aut indulgentias
aliquas insinuandum clero et populo in ecclesiis parochialibus ac
locis aliis vestri archidiaconatus memorati, absque literis nostris et
licentia speciali de caetero admittantur ; pecuniam etiam et res
quascumque, per hujusmodi quaestores, aut ad eorum instantiam
collectas . . . indilate faciatis sequestrari. . . . Datum in manerio
nostro de la Welehall' octavo die mensis Decembris, a° d' m°ccc°xl°
et consecrationis nostrae vii"°."
" Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense," edited by T. D. Hardy,
vol. iii. p. 325.
Provincial Synod of Dublin, 1348 :
" Cap. xxii. De quastoribus. Item, quia eleemosynarum
quaestores nonnullas abusiones in suis praedicationibus proponunt, ut
decipiant simplices tantum, et nonnulla alia bona subtili vel fallacj

APPENDIX 441
potius ingenio extorqueant, nonnulla etiam mala in deceptionem
animarum multiplicem perpetrentur ; statuimus et ordinamus, quod
nullus amodo quasstor sine literis archiepiscopi vel dioec. admittatur
quovismodo. . . . Sacerdotes vero qui alio modo quam supra dicto,
quaestores ad praedicandum voluntarie et scienter admittunt, per
annum a celebratione divinorum ipso facto sint suspensi ; et ipsi
quasstores, si contra prasmissa aliquid attentaverint, ipso facto sint
excommunicati. Et si per quadraginta dies perseveraverint, ad
significationem episcoporum capiantur et incarcerentur, quousque de
talibus aliud fuerit per loci dioecesanum dispositum. Quascunque
literas hujusmodi quasstoribus hactenus concessas revocamus, prae-
missarum sententiarum relaxatione sine absolutione loci dioecesani
reservata. Et capellani pecuniam ea occasione receptam ecclesiis
cathedralibus restituant triplicatam."
Wilkins, "Concilia," 1737, vol. ii. p. 750.

Bull of Pope Urban V, " contra quasstores hospitalis Jerusalem
in Anglia," 1369 :
" Urbanus . . . archiepiscopo Cant, ej usque suffraganeis, salu
tem. . . . Nuper dilectis filiis Johanne Sancti Dunstani West.,
Ricardo B. Mariae Wolnoth, rectoribus, et Philippo de Braunton,
ac Willelmo de Eya, perpetuis vicariis parochialibus ecclesiarum
London. Exon. et Norwicen. dioec. ac nonnullis aliis rectoribus
. . . nobis referentibus percepimus, quod quasstores priorum,
praeceptorum et confratrum domorum hospitalis S. Johannis Jeru-
salemitani in Anglia, de voluntate, conniventia, ratihabitione, seu
mandato dictorum priorum ... in pluribus contra juris et rationis
metas impudenter excedunt. . . . nonnulli tamen quasstores priorum
et confratrum prasdictorum, gratia quaestus hujusmodi ... ad
rectorum et vicariorum hujusmodi ecclesias accedentes, et se ad
praedicandum seu exponendum populo hujusmodi negotia quaestuaria
offerentes, licet congrue et legitime requisiti, literas sedis apostolicae
vel dioecesani loci eisdem rectoribus seu vicariis sic requirentibus,
ostendere seu exhibere penitus non curarunt neque curant ; quin
verius de voluntate, conniventia seu mandato de quibus praedicitur,
denegarunt expresse contra constitutiones canonicas . . . prasten-
dentes ipsos priores et fratres pro se et eorum quasstoribus in ea parte
fore notorie privilegiatos, licet hoc neque notorium fuerit neque
verum ; et ut quadam astutia colorata ipsos rectores, et vicarios
exhibitionem literarum huj usmodi sic petentes, acrius fatigent laboribus
?t expensis, ipsos eo quod exhibitionem litera.rum hujusmodi sig

442 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
deposcebant et deposcunt, tanquam injuriatores contra eorum
privilegia manifestos, et quaestuum suorum impeditores proclamarunt
et proclamant, ipsosque ea occasione coram eorum conservatoribus
seu subconservatoribus ad loca diversa et quandoque valde remota
fecerunt et faciunt ad judicium evocari, et per conservatores sive
subconservatores hujusmodi contra eosdem processus indebitos fieri,
eosque nonnunquam excommunicari, aggravari et denunciari licet
de facto, ac alia eis gravamina quamplura inferri procurarunt et
procurant, in ipsorum rectorum et vicariorum grave prasjudicium et
scandalum plurimorum : et insuper quaestores prasdicti frequenter
et potissime, quando satagunt alicui rectori seu vicario nocere, ad
ipsius rectoris seu vicarii ecclesiam in aliquo die festo, praecipue
quando populus solitus est offerre, accedunt, et ibidem quasstuare,
seu nomina fratrias seu fraternitatis suae legere incipiunt et continuant
usque ad talem illius diei festi horam, qua missa ibidem pro illo die
convenienter non potest celebrari ; sicque rectores et vicarios hujus
modi suis faciunt oblationibus, quas eis in missis hujusmodi obveniunt,
nequiter defraudari. Insuper in ecclesiis et locis ad eos seu dictum
hospitale nullatenus pertinentibus, licet publice interdictis seu pollutis
divina faciant etiam publice celebrari, et in eis pro eorum libito per
se et alios sepeliunt corpora defunctorum ; officium quoque seu
negotium quaestuandi personis simplicibus et quasi illiteratis com-
mittunt, qui simplices aliis simplicibus erroneum praestantes ducatum,
generaliter, ut de spiritualibus taceamus, in populo diffundunt
errores." Wilkins, "Concilia," London, 1737, vol. iii. p. 83.
Letter of Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, a.d. 1378 :
" Simon, etc., dilecto filio commissario nostro Cantuar. generah,
salutem, etc. Ad nostrum audientiam est perlatum, quod licet
eleemosynarum quaestores, nisi apostolicas vel dioecesani episcopi
literas exhibuerint, admitti non debeant, vel permitti indulgentias
sibi concessas insinuare, et populo prasdicare ; nonnulli tamen
quaestores, qui non sine multa temeritatis audacia, et deceptione
multiplici animarum, ac elusione populi christiani, indulgentias
remissionesque falsas et frivolas, et alia erronea . . . praedicant
abusive, tam per vos, quam per official, archidiaconi nostri Cantuar.
de diebus in dies indifferenter illicite admittuntur, nos, abusus hujus
modi omnimodo abolere volentes, vobis . . . inhibemus et per vos
dicto official! ac omnibus aliis nobis subditis . . . inhiberi volumus
et mandamus ne quxstores hujusmodi absque nostris literis suiEcient-

APPENDIX 443
ibus in hac parte, ac vobis et ipsis liquere possit literas apostolicas
quaestorum hujusmodi si quas habent, per nos examinatas primitus
extitisse, admittatis ibidem de caetero vel admittant."
Wilkins, "Concilia," vol. iii. p. 131.
Bull of Pope Boniface IX, a.d. 1390 :
" Ad audientiam nostram, non sine magna mentis displicentia
fidedignorum quamplurimum relatio perduxit quod quidam religiosi
diversorum etiam mendicantium ordinum et nonnulli clerici saeculares
etiam in dignitatibus constituti, asserentes se a nobis aut a diversis
legatis seu nuntiis sedis apostolicas missos, et ad plura peragenda
negotia diversas facultates habere per partes, in quibus es pro nobis
et Ecclesia Romana thesaurarius deputatus, discurrunt, et veras vel
prastensas, quas se habere dicunt, facultates fideli et simplici populo
nunciant et irreverenter veris hujusmodi facultatibus abutentes, suas
fimbrias, ut vel sic turpem et infamem quasstum faciant, impudenter
dilatant, et non veras et praetensas facultates hujusmodi mendaciter
simulant, cum etiam pro qualibet parva pecuniarum summula, non
poenitentes, sed mala conscientia satagentes iniquitati suae, quoddam
mentitae absolutionis velamen praetendere, ab atrocibus delictis, nulla
vera contritione, nullaque debita prascedenti forma (ut verbis illorum
utamur) absolvant ; male ablata, certa et incerta, nulla satisfactione
prasvia (quod omnibus sasculis absurdissimum est) remittant ; castitatis,
abstinentias, peregrinationis ultramarinae, seu beatorum Petri et Pauli
de urbe aut Jacobi in Compostella apostolorum, et alia quasvis vota,
levi compensatione commutent ; de hasresi vel schismate nominatim
aut incidenter condemnatos, absque eo quod in debita forma abjurent
et quantum possunt debite satisfaciant, non tantum absolvant, sed
in integrum restituant ; cum illegitime genitis, ut ad ordines et
beneficia promoveri possint, et intra gradus prohibitos copulatis aut
copulandis dispensent, et eis qui ad partes infidelium absque sedis
prasdictas licentia transfretarunt, vel merces prohibitas detulerunt, et
etiam qui Romanae aut aliarum ecclesiarum possessiones, jura, et
bona occuparunt, excommunicationis et alias sententias et poenas, et
quaevis interdicta relaxent, et indulgentiam quarn felicis recordationis
Urbanus Papa VI praedecessor noster, christifidelibus certas basilicas
et ecclesias dictae urbis instanti anno visitantibus concessit, et quae
in subsidium Terrae Sanctas accedentibus conceduntur, quibusvis
elargiri pro nihilo ducant, . . . et quasstum, quem exinde percipiunt,
nomine cameras apostolicas se percipere asserant, et nullam de illo
nihilominus rationem velle reddere videantur : Horret et merito
indignatur animus, talia reminisci. . , .

444 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
" Attendentes igitur quod nostra interest super tot tantisque malis
de opportunis remediis salubriter providere, fraternitati tuae de qua
in iis et aliis specialem in domino fiduciam obtinemus, per apostolica
scripta committimus et mandamus, quatenus religiosis et clericis
saecularibus hujusmodi, ac eorum famiharibus, complicibus, et collegiis,
et aliis, vocatis qui fuerint evocandi, summarie, simpliciter, et de
piano, ac sine strepitu et figura judicii, etiam ex officio super prasmissis,
auctoritate nostra, inquiras diligentius veritatem, et eos ad reddendum
tibi computum de receptis et reliqua consignandum, remota appella-
tione, compellas, et quos per inquisitionem hujusmodi excessisse, vel
non verum aut non sufficiens seu ad id non habuisse mandatum
inveneris, capias et tandiu sub fida custodia teneas carceribus manci-
patos, donee id nobis intimaveris."
Baronius' " Annales ecclesiastic! " ; continuation by Raynaldus,
ed. 1752, vol. vii. p. 525.
Opinion of the University of Oxford on Pardoners, a.d. 1414 :
" Articulus tricesimus nonus ; contra falsas pradicationes quce-
storum. — Quia inverecund! quasstores turpissimos suos quaestus ad
firmam emunt cum Simone, indulgentias vendunt cum Gyesi, et
adquisita consumunt cum filio prodigo inhoneste, sed quod magis
est detestabile, cum non sint in sacris ordinibus constituti, publice
prasdicant, ac false prastendunt quod absolvendi a poena et a culpa
tim superstites quam defunctos plenam habeant potestatem, cum
aliis blasphemiis, quibus populum spoliant ac seducunt, et verisimiliter
ad tartara secum trahunt, prasstantes spem frivolam et audaciam ad
peccandum. Abusus igitur hujusmodi sectae pestiferae ab ecclesiae
limitibus deleantur."
Articuli concernentes reformationem universalis ecclesia, editi per
universitatem Oxon. Wilkins, " Concilia," vol. iii. p. 365.
Suppression of pardoners by the Council of Trent, a.d. 1562 :
" Cum multa a diversis antea conciliis, tam Lateranensi ac
Lugdunensi, quam Viennensi, adversus pravos eleemosynarum
quasstorum abusus remedia tunc adhibita, posterioribus temporibus
reddita fuerint inutilia, potiusque eorum malitia ita quotidie magno
fidelium omnium scandalo et querela excrescere deprehendatur, ut
de eorum emendatione nulla spes amplius relicta videatur, statuit
ut posthac in quibuscumque Christianas religionis locis eorum nomen
atque usus penitus abolcatur, nee ad officium hujusmodi exercen^um

APPENDIX 445
uUatenus admittantur ; non obstantibus privilegiis, ecclesiis, mon-
asteriis, hospitalibus, piis locis et quibusvis cujuscumque gradus,
status et dignitatis personis, concessis, aut consuetudinibus etiam
immemorabilibus. Indulgentias vero aut alias spirituales gratias,
quibus non ideo christifideles decet privari, deinceps per ordinarios
locorum, adhibitis duobus de capitulo, debitis temporibus populo
publicandas esse decernit. Quibus etiam eleemosynas, atque oblata
sibi charitatis subsidia, nulla prorsus mercede accepta, fideliter
colligendi facultas datur, ut tamdem coelestes hos Ecclesias thesauros,
non ad quaestum sed ad pietatem exerceri, omnes vere intelligant."
" Conciliorum generalium Ecclesiae catholicas, Pauli V Pont.
Max. auctoritate editus." Tomus iv, Rome, 1628, second paging,
p. 261.
XVI
(P- 344)
THE FIRST RECORDED CRUCIFIX IN ENGLAND
SCULPTURED FROM LIFE
Thomas of Burton, Abbot of Meaux, near Beverley, writes :
" Dictus autem Hugo abbas xv"^ crucifixum novum in choro con-
versorum fecit fabricari. Cujus quidem operarius nullam ejus
formosam et notabilem proprietatem sculpebat nisi in feria sexta, in
qua pane et aqua tantum jejuna vit. Et hominem nudum coram se
stantem prospexit, secundum cujus formosam imaginem crucifixum
ipsum aptius decoraret. Per quem etiam crucifixum Omnipotens
manifesta miracula fecerat incessanter. Unde tunc etiam putabatur
quod, si mulieres ad dictum crucifixum accessum haberent, augmen-
taretur communis devotio, et in quam plurimum commodum nostri
monasterii, redundaret. Super quo abbas Cistercii a nobis requisitus,
suam licentiam nobis impertivit ut homines et mulieres honestae
accedere possent ad dictum crucifixum, dum tamen mulieres per
claustrum et dormitorium seu alia officina intrare non permit-
tantur. . . . Cujus quidem licentiae praetextu, malo nostro, feminas
saepius aggrediuntur dictum crucifixum, prascipue cum in eis
frigescat devotio, dum illuc ut ecclesiam tantum introspiciant
accesserint, et sumptus nostros augeant in hospitatione earundem."
" Chronica monasterii de Melsa," edited by E. A. Bond, 1 866-68,
vol. iii. p. 35, Rolls Series.

446 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE
XVII
(p. 141, 362)
THE PILGRIMAGE OF REYNARD
Tired of his sins, duly shriven, ordered by the hermit to go to
Rome, and there receive absolution, Reynard,
" Escrepe et bordon prent, si muet.
Si est entres en son chemin,
Molt resemble bien pelerin,
Et bien Ii sist I'escrepe au col."
He does not care to travel alone and, like most pilgrims, prefers
company : " Mes de ce se tint il por fol
Qu'il est meiiz sans compaignie,
Le grant chemin n'ira il mie,
An^ois I'avoit laissie a destre,
Une sente tome a senestre,"
and leads him to a place where he finds
" dan Belin
Le moton qui se reposoit,"
and whom he persuades to go with him, thus avoiding, he suggests,
being eaten by his owners. A third member, the donkey, is soon
added to their party :
" En lor chemin en sont entre,
Mes il n'orent gueres erre,
Qant trovent Bernart I'archeprestre
En un fosse les cardons pestre,"
and he is easily persuaded to follow. They enter the forest. Night
comes. Where shall they find shelter .? Why should we, Reynard
remarks, look for any other " ostel " than the fine grass under this
tree .? " Et nos queil ostel querrion
Fors la bele erbe soz cest arbre ?
Mens I'eim que un paleis de marbre."

APPENDIX 447
Appealing as must have been the fine grass to him, Belin objects,
the wood being so dangerous. So they continue their journey until
they reach the " ostel Primaut," that is the house of Primaut the
Wolf, who was away. There they find
" Char salee, formache et oes . . .
Si i trovent bone cervoise.
Tant boit Belins que il s'envoise ;
Si a commencie a chanter
Et I'archeprestre a orguaner,
Et dan Renart chante en fauset."
Concluding speech of Reynard, after the siege of the house by
the wolves, and the miscarriage of the pilgrimage :
" Segnor, dist Renart, par mon chef,
Cest eires est pesant et gref;
II a el siecle meint prodome
Qu' onques encor ne fu a Rome ;
Tiex est revenuz de sept seinz
Qui est pires qu'il ne fu einz.
Je me voil metre en mon retor,
Et si vivrai de mon labor
Et gaaignerai leelment.
Si ferai bien a povre gent.
Lors ont crie : outree, outree !
Si ont fete la retornee."
" Le roman de Renart," ed. Ernest Martin, Strasbourg and
Paris, 1882 ff, 7 vols. ; i. pp. 269 ff.

INDEX

Aaron's rod, 386
Aberystwith, 77
Abingdon fair, 250
Abinger, 273
Abjuratio Re^ni, 168, ff.
Acre, 408
Adam and Eve, 287, 289
Adscriptio Clebce, 261
Adventure seekers, iSi, 200, 406, 419
Agincourt, 244
Alchemists, 335
Aldenby, Agnes of, 155
Aleaurae, St., of Burgos, 344
Ale, of various sorts, 251
Alehouses, 17, 133 ff., 136 ff.
Alexander,, romance of, 195, 199
Aliand, W,, 434
.\lreton, 126
Amadas, romance of, 196
"Amants Magnifiques," Moliere's les,
¦ 336
Amiens, 118, relics at, 365, 371
-Amundeville, John d', 166
Ampilforde, Th., a mason, 54 ff.
Anchorites, 142
" Ancient Mariner," 148
Andover, 250
Angerville, Richard d', or de Bury,
324, 440
Anglure, Ogier VIII, lord of, his
journey to Palestine, -389, 405,
409, 413 ff., to Egypt, 415
Anglure-sur-Aube, 415, 417, 418
Animals, performing, 217
Anne of Bohemia, Queen, 229
Anson, major, 233
Anthony, St., 415
Appleton, friar W. de, a physician,
187
Apprentices, in sanctuary, 170 ff.
Apulia, 184
Archers.- the King's, 104
Ardennes, forest of, 184

Arewe, J. S., a crossbowman, 65
Aristotle, 10
Armenians, 395
Arthur, King, 195, 197, 224
Articles' of the Eyre, 120
-Articles of the View, 112 ''''
Articuli Cleri, 120, 168'
Arundel. Archbishop Thos., 20, 134,.
321, on pilgrimages, 359 ff. ; 439
Arundel, Earl of, 150, 205
Ascham, Roger, 347
-Asses, the usual mount in Palestine,
413
Assi.si, 293
Aswardeby, 429
Athelstan, King, 165, 328
Atkinson, J. C, 14, 77
Aufrike, i.e. Mahdia, 398 ff.
Aumbresbury, 197
Auray, battle of, 339
-Austria, Albert W., Duk^ of, 465'
Autolycus, 193, 235, 252 ff.
Avenel, Viscount d', on travelling in
Erance, 86, 126, 202, 229, 389
Avesbury, Rob. d', 392, 398
Avignon, 32, 33, 36,-37i
Avon, bridges on the, 53 ff., 79
Avranches, 352 ¦¦''
Aylesbury, Si
Ayremynne, Rich, de, 118
Bacon, Francis, 173, on f riaifs, '3 1 1
Bacon, Roger, 295
Bailiff, III, 151, 431
Bajazet, 398
Baker, John le, M.P., 264
Baker, Oliver, 14
Ball, John, 19, 20, 212, 215,' 285,
his views, 28G ff,, Froissart and,
289 : 290, 293
Ball, W. W. R., 129
Barbers, company of, 189
Barclay, Alexander, 123

29

450

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

Bardi, the. 232
Barking, Abbess of, 40
Barncastle, 54
Bartholomew fair, 250, 251
Barton, 426, 433
Bateman, S., 122
Bath, 30
Battle Abbey, 12 1
Bears and bearwards, 18, 206, 216,
222, 236
Beauty powder, 192
Becket, Thos., 349 ff. ; see Thomas,
St.
Bedford Bridge, 60
Bedier, Joseph, 202, on pilgrimages,
344 ; 387
Beds, 125 ff.
Beer, 133, 251
Beggars, blind, 18, 182 ; 19, 20, 181,
students as, 236, 276 ; 252,
labourers as, 269 ff., to cease
wandering, 275, friars as, 294,
302
Beirut, 408, 409
Belleforest, F. de, 49
Belloc, Hilaire, 352
Bernard, a Fr. monk, 409
Berri, Duke de, 231
Berwick, 65 ff.
Bethleem, 386, 395, 396, 416
Beverley, sanctuary at, 159, 163 ff.,
its minstrels, 206, 2H ; 347, 426
Billingham, 36
Billings, R. W., 159
Birch, de Gray, 60
Birmingham, 39
Bishops, travelling, 115
Blackburn, 39
Blackheath, 212
Blignieres, A. de, 17
Blois, Charles de, 232, 339
Blythebury, 151
Boccacio, his fralipoUa, 322, 327 ff.
Bodenho, John de, 60
Bohemia, 252
Bohun, Humphrey, Earl of Hereford,
340. 394
Boislisle, A. de, 397
" Boke of Nurture," the, 17
Bonaparte, 408, 413
Boniface, Pope, 386
Boniface IX, on pa'"doners, 31O ff.,
324. 443
Bonnardot, 389
Books, sold at fairs, 252
Boston, 370
Boswell, James, 252
BotiUer, Ralph le, 155

Boucicaut, Jean le Meingre, Marshall
de, 404 ff., 407
Boucicaut, the younger, 4r4
Boulogne, 371
Bourbon, Louis, ist Duke of, 397 ;
Louis, 3rd Duke, his crusade
398 ff.
Bourbon, Etienne de, 359
Bourgogne, Jean de, alias Mandeville,
406 ff.
Bourne, Sir Roger, 301
Bouvines, 354
Bow Bridge, 40 ff., 43
Brabant, 229
Bracton, Henry de, 257, 258, 262
Bradamante, 256
Bradeley Bridge, 429
Bradshaw, 99
Brant Broughton, 138
Brantingham, Thos. de, 142, 202, 204,
229
Braunton, Philip de, 441
Bravi, 152, 175
Bray, Master John, a physician, 187
Brest, 230
Breul, Karl, 200
Bridges, at Crowland, 13, 21, London,
13, 14 [see London Bridge),
Avignon, 13, 32, 33, 36, Cahors,
13. 37. 69, Stratford-at-Bow, 13,
14, 41, 'Wakefield, 14, 67, with
defensive towers, 14, 71 ff., 75 ;
at Monmouth, 14, 75, on the Esk,
14, 30 ff., Pont St. Esprit, 32,
Roman, 32, 68, Orthez, Limoges,
Lancaster, 356., Botyton, 36;
pious character of, 36 ff., how
repaired, 36 ff., 42 ff., 57 ff. ; Bow,
40 ff. ; bad state of, 41 ff., chapels
on, 43 ff.. Fleet, Holborn, Saintes,
La Rochelle, 43, 44 ; houses on,
47 ff., 74 ff., at Paris, Poissy,
Florence, 49 ff., wooden, 53, Hugh
of Clopton's, 53, Catterick, 54,
built by Englishmen, 54, at Yarm,
58, Huntingdon, 59, tolls and
gifts for the maintenance of,
58 ff., at Rochester, 60, 62, Bed
ford, 60. dangerous, 60 ff., 65,
Moneford, 60, Heybethebridge,
61, and the Justices in Eyre, 63,
at Shoreham, 64, Berwick, 65 ff.,
revenues of, 66 ; at Chester, 66,
remodelled, 69, at Rotherham,
St. Ives, 70, Bath, 74, Norwich
Castle, 77, near Danby Castle,
77, at Durham, Hereford, Bedford,
LlangoIlen,Dumfries, Huntingdon,

INDEX

451

Bridges — conti n ued
Potter Heigham, Tewkesbury,
78 ; the Great Charter and, 83 ;
hermits and the, 143, consisting
in a plank, 429, at Chesford,
Bradeley, Exhorne, etc., 429-;
too low, 426 ; who should repair,
429 ff.
Bristol, 206, 244, staple, 247, fair,
251 ; 370
Broker, Nicholas, a coppersmith, 14
Brompton, Wm. and Margery, 206
Brotherton, 39
Browning, Robert, 291
Bruce, David, 347
Brudtholl, 57
Bruges, 238, 243
Bruges, Thos. de, a champion, 117
Brutus, the Trojan, 196
Brynchesley, Thos. of, a messen
ger, 232
Bucker, J. C. and C. A., 70
Budet, Durand, 232
Buffoons, 217 ff.
Bull, Wm., a priest, 70
BuUion, export of, forbidden, 239 ff.,
241 ff., 265, 376
Bulls, papal, 20, 319 ff., 439, against
pardoners, 443 ff.
Burgundy, Duke of, 408
Burton, Thos., 343, 39i ff-. 445
Bury, Isabel of, a murderess, 1 7 1
Bury, Richard de, on pardoners,
324. 440
Butler, Samuel, 273
Cade, Jack, 167, 438
Caen, 351
Caesar, 254, 297
.Cahors, 13, 35, 37, 69
Cairo, 4618, 415
Calabria, 184
Calais, 230, staple, 248 ; 371
Caldecote, Wm., 281
Calder, bridge on the, 70
'Cambridge, 129, 236, 251
Cambynskan, 203 ff.
Cana, 389
Cannock 'Wood, 150
Canterbury, 20, 34, 60, 133, i34. has
minstrels, 206, staple, 247, 248 ;
263, 279, 312, 319, 321, 322, 347,
chief English piilgrimage, 348 ff. ;
fortified, 364 ; 425
" Canterbury Tales," 15, 16, 20, 103,
115, 214, 227, 292, 315, supple
ment to the, 364
Cantilupo, 'Walter de, 166

Canynge, 'Wm., 244, 245
Capgrave, John, a pilgrim to Rome,
387 ff.
Carpenter, John le, M.P., 264
Carretto, Ilaria del, 315
Carriages, 15, 84, for the wealthy,
95ff.,etruscan, 95, for the queen, 99
Carriers, common, 149
Carrol, Sir Rob., 375
Carts, 15, 84, London tax on, 85,
common, 90, hired, 91, reaper's, go
CastigUone, Baldassare, 380
Castles, their halls, 122, hospitality,
in, 122, become mansions, 150
Catacombs, 385
Catherine, chapel of Saint, 43 ;
Queen, 347
Cats, 237
Catterick Bridge, 54, 79
Caumz, John, a minstrel, 204
Causeways, 39, 64, 80, 138
Caversham, Our Lady of, 348
Caxton, 402
Cenis, Mount, 396
Chaise-Dieu, 344
Chamberlain, the royal, 11 j H.
Chambernoun, Oto, 375
Chambers, E. K., 205, 206, 2n, 213,
217, 218
" Champertors," 153
Champions, for duels, 117
Chandos, Sir John, 375 '
Chantries, 39, 40
Chapels on bridges, 43 ff., 57, at
'Wakefield, 67 ff., at Rotherham,
Bradford-on-Avon, St. Ives, 70
Chapmen, 181, 236, 246
Charcoal, 279
Charer, Johnle, a carriage-maker, c;9
Charlatans, 182 ff.
Charlemagne, 195, 196, 216, 296
Charles St. Borromeo, 362
Charles V, Emperor, a pilgrim to
Canterbury, 355
Charles V, King of France, 329
Charles VI, King of France, 85
Charlton, John of, 298
Chartres, 350, relics at, 372
Chatterton, Thos., 244
Chaucer, 9, 15, 16, 18, 20, 25, 40, 41,
100, 103, 105, 125, 133, 187, 195 ff.,
201, 203, on nobility, 213 ; 217,
fond of news, 223 ; 246, M.P..
264 ; 283, on friars, 291 ff., 301,
303, 307, 310, his pardoner,
315 ff., 322, 327, 330, 333, 336;
339, 348, 357. 358, 359, 365.
decries pilgrims, 368 ; 371

452

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

Chaundeler, Rob., M.P., 264
"¦ Cheker of the Hope," 134
Cherbourg, 230, 232
Chesford Bridge, 429
C-hester, bridge at, 66 ; 69, 73, 78,
its minstrels, 206 ; 408
¦" Chevalier au Barisel," le, 138
Chicheley, Archbishop H., 334
Chichester, staple at, 247 ; 346
Child, F. J., 437
Childebert, 177
Chimneys, in greater use, 124
China, 408
Cicero, 323
Cirencester, 42 8
Citeaux, 125, 344
Clamor Patri{S, 177
Clare, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady, her
carriage, 96 ; her crusade by
proxy, 394
Claypole, bridge at, 429
Clement VI, 36, on indulgences, 314,
391 ff., 438
Clere, Reginald, 318
Clergy, non-residence of, 121, foreign,
121
Clerk, iRoger, a quack, 188
Clerk, William, a messenger, 391
Clerkenwell, 119
Clerks, diffusion of ideas through,
283 ff.
Clermont-Ferrand, 219
Cliff, John, 436
Clopton, Hugh of, 14, 53 ff.
Clyf, William de, 342
Coal, 238
Codrington, T., 31
Coggeshall, Abbot of, 64, 429
Cok, John, a messenger, 2^2
Cok, Peter, a ship master, 375
Cokatrices, in the Nile, 415
Cole, John, a mason, 278
Colechurch, Peter, bridge-builder,
44
Cologne, 347, 372 .
Commons, their illiberal tendencies,
264 ff.; 283:
Communism, propagated by John
BaU, 289, by the frjars, 293
Compiegne, 353
Compostela, St. James of, 21, 24,
3^3, 344, 352, 362, 36,5,370, licences
for pilgrims to, 375 ;. ,381, 389,
390, 404, 406, 443
Compton, John, an arc}ier, 318
" Condottieri," English, 403 ff.
¦" Confessio Amantis," 335, 400, 401
Conjurors, 217

Constantine the Great, 385, 395 '
Consuls, in the Levant, 414
Contarini, Andrea, 404
Contarini, Lorenzo, 352
Cook, Chaucer's, 116
Cook, John, 73
Copenhagen, 186
Cordier, H., 406
Cork, staple at, 248
Corn, 266
Cornwall, 30
Cornwall, Duke of, 119
Coroner, 113
" Cortegiano," 380
Corufla, 375
Coryat, Thos., 192
Councils, of York, 115, on the right
of sanctuary, 158, 434; of
Salzburg, 306, of Clermont, 313,
of Trent suppressing pardoners^
337, of Dublin, 440, of Lateran, .
Lyons, Vienne, Trent, 444, Lon
don, York, 432
Coventry, 206, 390
Cox, J. C, 169, 173
Cranmer, Archbishop, on Becket, 35&
Crecy, 200, 229, 355
Crete, 410 ,
Creton, 14, 15, 20, 205, 321, 439
Crochille, John, a priest, 174, 258 ,
Cromwell, Oliver, 60, on sanctuades,.
174
Cromwell, Thomas, 348
Crowland, bridge at, 13, 21, 77, 429
Crucifix, a miraculous, 343 ff., 445
Crusades, 32, 313, 394, 397 ff-, 4°?
" Cursor Jlundi," 196
Curteys, John and Wm., 342
Cuthbert, St., 39, 159, 164, 167,^.346^
434
Cuthbert, Wm., 164
Cutts, C. L., 144
Cyprus, 405 ff., 410, 418
" Dais," 122
Damascus, 409
Danby Castle, 14, 77
Dances, fourteenth century, 18,
tumbling, 218 ff., in cemetries.
334
Dante, 25
Danthrop, Matthew, a hermit, 142
Dartford, 359
Dartmouth, 370, 375
" Darvell Gathern," 348
Davies, Robert, 29
Debtors, in sanctuary, 170 ff.
Dee, bridge on the, 78

INDEX

453

Degrevant, romance of Sir, 199
DelaviUe le Roulx, 243, 398, 405, 414
Denain, 118
¦" De Proprietatibus Rerum," 335
Derby, 426
Derby, John of, a priest, 60
Des Champs, Eustache, 125
Despenser, Edward le, 82
Devil, tempting a hermit, 114
Devil's Bridge, 77
¦" Dictum de Kenilworth," 341
Diderot, 237
Dinners, fourteenth century, 16, 20,
109, 304
" Diocletian," 199
¦" Diz de I'Erberie," 185
Doctors, or physicians, 186, 187
Dogs, 276, 297
Dominic, St., de la Calzada, 344
Dominicans, Preachers, or Black
Friars, 291, 301
Dover, 121, 169, 354, 370, 371
Drawbridge, 45, 48, 53
"Drawlatches," 176, 256
Dressing, before a fire, 16
Drogheda, staple at, 248
Drug-sellers, 184 ff.
Dublin, staple at, 247
Du Cange, 315
Duel, by champion, 117, 261
Dumfries, bridge at, 78
Dunbar, William, 49
Durham, knocker, 18, 158, bridges,
62, 73, 74, 78 ; 126, sanctuary,
163 ff., 434, pilgrimage to, 346,
sacrilege at, 393 ; 440
Dyke, bridge on the, 53
Dynet, William, a Lollard, 358
East Dereham, 291
Eccleston, Thos. of, 293
Edington, 410
Edward the Confessor, 346
Edward I, 62, 63, 83, his itineraries,
104; 120, 156, 202, 214, 256, 257,
261, 277, 299, 347, 354, at Tunis,
' 397 ; 428
Edward II, 120, 186, receives min
strels, 201, 202, 232, 339, 342,
his offerings to shrines, 364 ; 428
Edward III, has bridges repaired, 57 ;
84, 125, gives to hermits, r42 ;
153 ff., 176, 187, buys MSS., 197,
¦his minstrels, 204, his messengers,
229 ; 231, 241, borrows from
merchants, 243 ff. ; 256, 266,
270, 297, 347, helps a pilgrim, 391,
.and the crusade, 397 ; 404

Edward IV, 123. 189, has minstrels,
204, their monopoly, 208, 222 ;
172
Edward VI, 40, 235
Eglamour, romance of Sir, 199
Egrum, the lady of, 80
Egypt, 7, 8, cotton from, 243 ;
406, as the road to Jerusalem,
407 ; 415, its strange monu
ments and animals, 416 ff.
Eleanor, Queen. 293
Eleanor, Lady, 99
Elephants, 217, 417
Elizabeth, Queen, 9, 48, 236
Eltham, 123, 206
Elton, on tenures, 31, on markets,
250
Ely, 80, 208
" Elynour Rummynge," 138
Emancipation, longings for, 212 ff.
Engel, Carl, 208
England, supreme on and protected
by, the sea, 240 ff., 244, undergoes
transformation, 421 ff.
English, the, like change and travels,
402
Enlart, Prof. C, 18, 371, 372
Erasmus, on pilgrimages, 362 ff.,
Erming Street, 30, 54
Ermyte, John, 35
Esk, the river, 42, 77
" Esprit des Lois," 244
Ethelbert, King, and sanctuary,
Eugene IV, 346
" Euphues and his England," 49
Euse, Jacques d', 232
Eustochius, 396
" Excursion," the, 253
Exeter, i8, its minstrels'
208 ff. . staple at, 247,
328; 441
Exeter, Duke of, 13
Exhorne Bridge, 429
Eya, Wm. de, 441
Eyre, articles, or justices of the, 63,
113, 120, 432
Fabliaux, 17, 19, 202, 216
" Faerie Queene," a bridge in, 74
Fairs, the goo.se, 193 ff. ; 248 ff.
Falaise, 315
Falcons, 204
Falstaff, 138
Famagusta, 407
Farnese, Cardinal, 192
Faryngton, Sir Wm. de, 231
Fashions, 96
Fencers, 236

366

1.58

gallery,
relics at.

454

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

Fenere, Rob. le, 59
Ferrees, Ralph de, 166
Ferries, 3.5, 65, 129, .(33
Ferry bridge, 39
Finsen, Niels, 186
Fisher, Bishop John, 355
Fishes, 129, 250
Fisshere, Geoffrey le, M.P., 264
Fitzjohn, Robert, 108
FitzRalph, Archbishop Richard, 297
FitzWarin, Fulk, 255
Flagellants, 392
Flaherty, W. E., 279
Flanders, 59, 229, 230, trade with,
238 ; 243
Flemings, 239 ff.
" Fleta," 63, 104, 108, 113, 169, 177,
on outlaws, 257
Flower, C. T., on public works in
Middle Ages, 60, 81, 138
Foix, Comte de, 398
Fords, 35
Forest, friar, 310, 347
Forests, life in, 19, 254, 23S, 263 ff.,
wood from the, 279
Forgers of seals, 318
Forsate, 162
Forte, Isabella de, 112
Fosse, the, 30
Foston, 345
Fountains, Abbot of, 429
¦' Foure Ps," the. 253, 327
Fournier, Ed., 126, 134
Fourvieres, its chapel of St. Thomas,
350
'' Fox," Volpone or the, 191 ff.
Fox.john, mayor of Northampton, 284
Foxe, John, 273
France, misery in, owing to the wars,
279; see Roads and .Bridges.
Francino, 387
Francis, St., 32, 293, his rule and
ideals, 294 ff.
Franciscans, Friars minor, . or Grey
Friars, 291 ff.
"Frank almoigne," 29, 142
French, the, of Stratford-atte-Bow,
of Norfolk, 246 ; manual to
teach, 130 ff., importance to
know, 401 ff.
Friars, 20, 24, i8i, 182, travelling,
283, Langland and Chaucer on,
291 ff., 298, 307 ; preaching
emancipation, 293, why founded,
294 ff., Matthew Paris on, 296,
wealth and buildings of, 296 ff.,
burials in their churches or
habits, 297, 302, Wyclif on, 298,

Friars — continued
begging, 302, Walsingham and
Oxford on, 303, derided and
maltreated, 305, the secular clergy-
and councils on, 306, are every
where, 306 ff., their pedlar's
wallet, 307, their letters of
fraternity, 308, Sir Thomas More-
on, 309, doomed in England, 310,.
Bacon on, 311, 396, 4198.
Fridstool, 159 ff., at Beverley, 159,.
Hexham, 159, 160, Sprotborough,.
161, 163
Frith, the church, 158 ff.
Froissart, 15, 82, 99, 118, 279, om
John BaU, 289 : 339, 355, 375,
on the crusade of 1390, 398 ff.
Fullar, Erasmus, 3.t6
FurnivaU, F. J., 9, 13, 15, 16, 17, 49,
134, 437
Gaddesden, John of, 186 ff., 338
Garette, John, a mason, 54 ff.
Gascoigne, Thos., 218 ff., 346
Gascony, 230, 239
Gaunt, John of, 35, 36, 166, his;
physicians, 187 ; his minstrels,.
205 ; 206, 258, to be King of
England, 278 ff., kind to tenants,
279 ; 403
" Gawaine and the Green Knight, "203,
Genoa, 399 ff.
George, St., 389, 406
George T, re-abolishes sanctuary, 174
Gifford, Wm., 50
Gilbert, Wm. and Richard, 375
Gilds, repair bridges, 39 ff., of min
strels, 211, 435 ff. ; foreign, 242,
help pilgrims, 389 ff.
Gipsies, 182
Glanville, Bartholomew de, 122, 335.
Glasson, 114
Glastonbury, 126, 343, pilgrimage to,
346
Glendower, Owen, 309
Gloucester, inn at, 126, 131 ; 178, 318
Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of,
298
Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, 16
Godelak, Walter, 79
Godeland, 142
Gold, William, a condottiere, 403 ff.
Goldsmiths, and sanctuary, 171
Golias, and goliardic poetry, 200 ff.
Goliath, his tooth, 389
Gonzaga, Louis, lord of Mantua, 405
Gorst, Walter de, 298
Gosse, Edmund, 9

INDEX

455

307, 335, 400. 401

Gower, John, 136,
Grant, F., 233
Great Charter, on bridges, S3 ; 11:
Greek, manual of, 410
Gregoire, Bishop Henry, ^2
Grenefeld, Wm., 345
Grey, Lord, of Fallodon, 18
Grey, John of, 155
Grey friars, 291
Greyhounds, 231
Grim, Edward, 349
Griselda, 256
Grosseteste, Robert, 295
Grjrmesby, 426
Guaches, 375
Guest house, 14
Guest, J., 70
Gulliver, 408

30
118

Hadrian, Emperor,
Hainaut, Jean de,
Hales, J. W., 371, 437
Haliday, Walter, a minstrel, 204, 436
HaUtgarius, Bishop, on indulgences,
313
Hall, the, in castles, its uses, 122 ff.,
its changes, 124 ff., with a gallery
for minstrels, 207
HaU, Hubert, 238
HaUiwell, J. O., 437
Hampole, 290 ff., 343; see Rolle of
Hanse towns, 239, merchants, 241
Harlots, following the court, 104 ff., 108
" Haro, clameur de, " 114
Harrison, Wm., 17, 48, 49, 251
Hastings, battle of, 195
Hatfield, 207
Haughton, Sir Thos., 164, 434
Hawking, and good roads, 83, 84
Hawkwood, Sir John, 403
Hayles, holy blood of, 347
Hazlitt, W. C, 437
Hearne, Thos., 58, 427
Heath, Sidney, 347, 352
Hedecrone Bridge, 429
Hedon, 426
Hekinby Bridge, 429
Henry II, and Becket, 349 ff.,
his penance, 352, revisits Can
terbury, 354, at Rocamadour, 372
Henry III, 61, 112, 217, 257, 272, 329,
341, 347, 354
Henry IV (or Henry of Lancaster),
13, 14, 20, 143, 244, opposed by
the friars, 308, 309 ; 321, fights
Prussians, 398, 439 ff.
Henry V, regulates surgery, 188 ff.,
his min.strels, 204 ; 244, 407

173, 212, 347, 354,

176
; 116,

438

should have
144, judged
, by Rutebeuf,
148; 358

and sanctuary

Henry VI, 153,
Henry VII, 153,
405
Henry VIII, 74, regulates surgery,
189 ff. ; 347, a pilgrim to Canter
bury, destroys St. Thomas's
shrir:e, 355
HerbaUsts, 182 ff., Rutebeuf's, 184 ff.,
laws about, 188
Herbarton, Richard de,
Hereford, bridge at, 7
Hereward, 255
Hermits, 17, 138 ff.,
testimonial letters,
by Langland, 145 ff.,
147 ; Coleridge on,
Herod, King, 415
Heron, Sir Robert, 65
Hesel, 433
Hewlett, H., 272
Hexham, " fridstool '
at, 18, 159 ff.
Heyhyngton, Wm., 164, 434
Heywood, John, 189, 327
Higden, Ralph, 401, 403
Highgate, 309
Hogarth, 273
Hoghton, Adam of, 35
Holborn, 309
Holdemess, 426
Holinshed, 310
Holy Land, 329, 390, pilgrimages to,
395 ff., described by Lannoy, 407,
guide books to, 408 ff. ; service
between Venice, and, 409 ff. ;
diseases in, 412 ; 419, 443
Holy Sepulchre, 417
Holywell, 347
Homer, 224
Honnecourt, Villard de, 16
Horn, King, 195, 368
Hornsey mere, 261
Horse litter, 15, 99, loi
Horse riding, 100 ff., by women, 103
Hospitality, its limits, 113, in monas
teries, 118 ff., abused, 120 ff.,
in castles, 122 ff.
Hostelries, 125 ff., in Erance,
ill-famed, 134 ff.
" House of Fafne " 217, 224 ff.
Houses, on bridges, 47, 49, 50 ff.,
Hrotsvitha, 134
" Hudibras," 273
Hudson, Thos., 164, 434
Hue and cry, 115, I76ff.
HuU, 390, 426
Humber, crossing the. 129, 433
" Humphrey Clinker," 122

207, 419

126,

456

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

Hundred years' war, lo, royal not
national in the fourteenth cen
tury, 200, 230
Hundreds, the, in, 431
Huntingdon, bridge at, 59 ff., 78
Iceland, 348
Ikenild Street,- .30
Incredulity, on the increase, 393
Indulgences, in favour of bridges,
36, origin, development and abuse
of, 312 ff., plenary, 313, attract
pilgrims, 383 ff., Clement VI, and,
392 ff., for Palestine pilgrims,
395 ; 438
Inns, the, 17, 123 ff., dialogue at,
130 ff., music at, 134, minstrels
at, 202
" Inscription maritime," 271
Ireland, 205, 230, staple in, 247
Ireland, Laurence of, a messenger, 232
IsabeUa, Queer, 82,, 297
Isabella, daughter of Ed. Ill, 202
Isembert, a bridge -builder, 13, 44, 54.
425 ff.
Islington, 309
Isumbras, romance of, ig5, 198 ff.
Jacquerie, 277
" Jacques le Fataliste," 237
Jaffa, 411, 412
James I, abolishes sanctuary, 173
Jean de Luxembourg, King, 355
Jeannette of France, 403 ff.
Jeddah, 376
Jerome, St., 387, on pilgrimages, 395
Jerusalem, 313, 352, 365, 368, 370,384,
391, pilgrimages to, the hoUest,
395ff., itinerary to, 4o6ff., 415 ff.
Jessopp, Dr. Augustus, 291
Joan of Arc, 244
John the Baptist, St., 371 ff.
John, St., of Beverley, 347
John, St., the Evangelist, 415
John, King of England, 44, a bridge-
builder, 79,425 ff., his itinerary, 104,
visits St. Robert, 142 ; 354, 427
John the Good, King of France, 95,
185, 232, 239, 265, 354
John XXII, Pope, 232, 340
Johnson, Samuel, 186, 252
Jongleurs, their repertory and be
haviour, 194 ff. "
Jonson, Ben, his mountebank, 184,
191 ff., 2.50
Joseph, of Arimathea, 347
Jowermersh, 80
Judges, witticisms of, 260

Jugglers, 18, 183, 216 ff., their
coarseness, 217 ; 252
Julian, Emperor, 386
Julius Caesar, romance' of, 195
Jury, III, 113 ff., their fate if per
jured, 114 ; 176 J ''M;..
Justices in Eyre, 63, 107, 113 ff.; 432
Justinian, Emperor, 158
Juvenal, 295
Kaermardj'n, staple at, 247
Karkeek, 348 ' '
Katerine, John, a dancer, 220
Kaye, Wm., a priest, 70
Kellawe, Bishop Richard de, 36
Kelm, 80
Kempe, A. J., 167
Kenilworth, 347
Kilby, T., 70
King, Daniel, 78
" King Horn," 195, 368
King's Lynn, 387
Kingston-upon-HuU, 370
Kitchin, G. W., 250
Knaresborough, hermitage at, 17,
139, 141 ft-
Knights, travelling, frontispiece, 13,
15, 97. IOI, at table, 109, seek and
grant hospitality, 119 ff., as high
waymen, 151, practice main
tenance, 153 ff., listen to songs
and romances, 194 ff., have music
during meals and keep minstrels,
203 ff., enjoy tumblings and
ribaldry, 217 ff., refugees in the
forest, 253 ff., and their villeins,
259 ff., buried in friars' churches,
297 ff., as pilgrims, 357, 364,
pilgrims by prox}^ 393, crusaders,
397 ff., pilgrims to the Holy
Land, 404 ff'.
Knights Hospitallers, iigff.
Knut, King, 347
Knj'ghton, 263
Kyteler, Dame Alice, 334
Labour, conscription of, 263
Labourers, free or not, 262 ff.,
statute of, 264 ff., become artifi
cers, 266, hold assemblies, 2 76, in
formers among, 278, freed, 419 ff.
Lafford, 429
La Fontaine, 130 )
Lancaster, Henry of, cousin to
Edward III, 340, 391
Lancaster, Isabella of. a nun, 197
Lancaster, Thomas, Earl of, 339 ff.,
342 ff.

INDEX

457

Lancelot, romance of, 15, 99
Lane, Wm. atte, a thief, 176
Langland, WiUiam, 16, 20, 25, 42,
43. 53, 124, 135, 136, 145 ff., 201,'
.203, 206, 207, 218, 233 ff., 237,
246, 250, on friars, 291, 298, 307,
336, on pilgrims, 358, 360, 368,
on scepticism, 393, 400
Langley Castle, 123
Lannoy, Gilbert de, 407
Laporte, Canon, 21, 366 /;
Lappeley, 151
Latimer, Alice, a recluse, 142 .'.'!
Latimer, Bishop Hugh, 310, on
miraculous statues, 363
Latimer, NeviUe, Lord, 14, 77
La Tour Landry, 96, 380
Latymer, Wm., lord of Yarm, 58
Lawrence, St., 328, 389
¦" Lazarillo de Tormes," 21, 331
Lecoy de la Marche, 359
Leet days, 431 ff.
Leicester, minstrels at, 206, plague
at, 263
Leland, John, 39, 70, 74, 79
Le Puy, 372
Letters, dictating and sending of, 228
Leven, Hugh of, 343
¦"Libelle of Englyshe Polycye,''
.244 ff.
Liberalism in England and France,
213 ff.
Lichfield, 150 ff.
Liege, 407
" Life of Alexander," 199
Limoges, 35
Lincoln, bridge at, 74 ; 138, 199,
dance of Salome at, 219, staple
at, 247, 347, 390, 426
Lindesay, David, Earl of Crawford, 47
Linne, 251
Lithuania, 398
Little John, 213
Liveries, given to retainers, 1 32 ff.
"Livre de la mutacion de Fortune,"
136
" Loci e libro veritatum," 346
Lodgings for the king and others,
117 ff.
Lollards, 284 ff., 298, and pilgrimages,
358 ff.
Lombards, 242 ff.
Lombardy, 230, 239, 407
London, Dr., 348
London, a hermit in, 142, its common
carriers, 149 ; 169, its minstrels,
206 ; 246, friars church in, 297 ;
342, .348, 37°

London Bridge, 13, 14, 43 ff., duel
on, 47, houses on, 47, 50 ff.,
heads on, 48, praise of, -485.,
dispraise of, 30, new, 30, tolls at,
58, disrepair of, 61 ff. ; 309,
425 ff. , maintenance of, 427 ff.
Longnon, 389
Loretto, 347
Louis VII of France, a pilgrim to
Canterbury, 353 ff.
Louis IX (St. Louis), gives an ele
phant to Henry III, 217 : 397
Louis X, le Hutin, 93, 215
'Louis XI, his wearing of medals, 365 ff.
LoutereU psalter, 15, 16, 17, 90, 93,
95, 97, "5, 116
Lucca, 313, 387
Luce, Simeon, 83
Ludinglond, 272
Luke, St., paints the Virgin, 387
Lune, 35
-Lusignan, James I of. King of
Cyprus, 405
Luther, 310, 363
Luxury, habits of, 124, 127
Lyly, John, 48, 49
Lyndsay, or Lindesay, Sir David, 327
Lynn, minstrels at, 206
Macbeth, 137
Madden, Sir F., 217
Madox, 260
Magna Charta, 227, 430
Mahdia, 398 ff.
Mahomet, 368, 383, 400
Maidstone, 278
" Maintenance," 133 ff.
M'aitland, F. W., iii
Male, Emile, 372, 380
Malta, 192
MandeviUe, Sir John, 21, on pilgrim
ages, 372; 387ff.,40i,4o6ff., 416
"Maniere de language, ' 'la, 1 30, 202, 402
Mantua, 380, 403, 404
Manuel II, Palseologus, 355
Manuscripts, iUuminated, 197
Map, Walter, 200
" Mappje Clavicula," 32
Marcella, 395, 396
Marco Polo, 387 ff.
Marian, maid, 213
Mariette, 417
Markeley, Wm. of, 62
Markets, weekly, 231
Marne, the, 233
Marseilles, 396
Marshall, Robert, 167
Martin, Ernest, 447

458

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

Maspero, Gaston, 417
Matliilda, Queen, 40
Matthew, F. D., 307
Maunselle, a. mason, 34 ff.
Meath, Petronilla of, a sorceress, 334
Meaux (Melsa) near Beverley, 84, 129,
260, 343, 391, 443
Mecca, 376
" Medecin malgre lui," le, 331
Meliadus, romance of King, 95
Menageries, 217
Merchants, 42, their perils when
traveUing, 150 ff., 156, 233,
dresses of, 237, 243, impeded by
regulations, 239 ff., foreign, 239 ff.,
protected by Edward III, 241 ff.,
lend to the king, 243 ff., use
rivers, 245, the male of, 246 ff.,
villeins become, 261
Merton College, 126
Messengers, 18, 116, 181, 223 ff.,
their " boystes," 227, whom
serving, 227 ff., writ bearers, 227,
professional, 228, their missions
and salaries, 228 ff., parcel
carriers, 231, travel fast, 231 ff.,
presents to, 232 ff., run risks, 233,
Langland on, 233 ff. ; 391, 419
Messines, 233
Meyer, Paul, 130, 349
Michael, St., 43, 338
Michel, Francisque, 126, 134
Middle Ages, life in the, 7, religious
spirit in the, 32
Mielot, Jean, 383
Milford, 203
" Mill on the Floss," 233
Minot, Laurence, 201
Minstrels, singing, 7, 13, gallery for,
18 ; 183, repertory and behaviour,
194 ff., received by the king,
201 ff., by a bishop, 202, at the
inn, 202, the king's, 204 ff., for
colleges, lords and cities, 203 ff.,
gifts to, 206, their instruments,
208 ff., monopoly of the royal,
208 ff., 433 ff., gUds of, 211,
spread liberal ideas, 212 ff., dis
appear, 216 ff., tolerated by St.
Thomas Aquinas, 217, execrated
by Phil. Stubbes, 221 ff. ; 419
" Mirabilia Romae," 388
Miracles, at Walsingham, 138, sham,
by Thos. of Lancaster, 339 ff., at
Meaux, 343 ff., at Rocamadour,
380 ff., at Santa Maria deUe
Grazie, 380, at Rome, 386, by
Moses, 413, in Bethlehem, 416

" Mirror for Justices,'' 169
Mistreworth, Sir John, 23 r
Moliere, 335
Mommsen, 30
Monasteries, hospitaUty in, 1 18 ff.
Monks, great agriculturists, &4, their
worldly dress, 113, 432
Monmoutii, bridge at, 14, 73
Monmouth, Geoffrey of, 224
Monnow Bridge, 14, 73
Montalto, Cardinal, 192
Montesquieu, 244
Montfort, Guy de, 229
Montfort, Henry de,-342 ...^.
Montfort, Reginald de, 342 :
Montfort, Simon de, 341, 372 ;
Moon, the planet of 'the English, 402
Mordon, Walter, a stockfishmonger,
298
More, Sir Thomas, 48, 172, on friars,
310; 333, 363, 365
Morley, Henry, 230
Morris, W. A., 112
Morston, Hamo de, 64, 429
" Mort d'Arthur," 199
Mortet, Victor, 32
Moses, 328, 413
Mosques, 414, 417
Mountebanks, 184 ff., 191
Mowbray. Lord, 60
Murley, Isabella of, an adulteress,
166
Mynach, bridge on the, 77
Mystery plays, 201
Naples, 330
Navarre, 230
Nazareth, 328, 400
Nets, certain, prohibited, 250
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 126, 149, staple
at, 247 ; 370
Newenham, 80
Newgate, 167, 171
Newport fair, 251
Newton Abbot, 66
Newur, 80
Nichol, J., 341
Nicholas, St., patron of travellers,
43, 389, 416
Nichols, F. M., 388
Nicholson, E. B., 406
Nicholson, Wm., a murderer, 162, 434
Nicodemus, 387
Nicopolis, 398
Nicosia, 403
Nile, comes from Paradise, 415
Niniveh, 400
Xith, bridge on the, 78

INDEX

459

Nobles, their lands scattered, 82,
who are truly, according to
Chaucer, 214, their literary tastes,
196 ff., slandered, 277, sceptic,
393 ; see Knights
Nogent, Ingelram de, a thief. 108
None-such-house, 13, 45, 48
Norden, 49
Norfolk, 347
Norfolk, Countess of, 78
Norfolk, Duke of, 47, 403
Northampton, 59, 284
North Berwick, 339
Northumberland, Earl of, 205
Norton, 36
Nor-wich, bridge at, 69, 78 ; 143,
minstrels at, 206, stapleat, 247; 441
Nottingham, 63, its goose fair, 193 ff . ;
358, 426
Nucius, Nicander, 49, 371
Nuncio, remits penance, 163 ; 232
" Nut Brown Maid," 255 ff.
Oaks, preserved, 136
" Octavian," 199
Oddyngesles, Sir John and Esmcn de,
131 ff.
Okeden forest, 36
Oliver, 296
Olives, Mount of, 396
Oman, C, 262, 276, 284
Orfevre, Richard, M.P., 264
Orleans, 244
Orleans, Ciiarles d', 13
Ormerod, 66, 78
Orthez, 33
Outlaws, 107, 174, 181, 2346., 269
Oxford, 126, its common carriers,
149 ; 176, 187, 236, to London
-by water, 246; 252, university,
on friars, 303, on pardoners, 327,
444
Palestine, pilgrimages to, 395 ff.
Palgrave, 108, 114
Palmatee, 312
Palmers, professional, 181, 367, 36S,
gUd, 334, way, 347, 338
Palmistry, 236
" Pantagruel," 330
Pantheon, the Roman, 386
Panurge, gaining pardons, 330
Pardon, charters of, 174 ff.
" Pardoner and the Frere," the, 327
Pardoner, Thomas, 318
Pardoners, 20, 24, 133, i8r, 312 ff.,
Chaucer's, 313 ff., 336, Boni
face IX on, 316 ff., greed and

Pardoners — continued
misdeeds of, 316, their associa
tions, 324, the authorized, 324,
collect various goods, 323, Urban
VI on, 326 ff., hated by the
secular clergy, 326, Oxford and
the, 327, on the stage, 331, in
Spain, 331, suppressed, 337 ; 367,
394, 419 ff., documents concern
ing, 440 ff., 444
Paris, roads leading to, 85, 86 ; 257,.
its minstrels, 211, its idlers, 263,-
its relics, 372
Paris, the diacre, 342
Paris, Gaston, 9
Paris, Matthew, portrays an ele
phant, 217, on fnars, 296 ; 329, 330
Parliament, the good, 9, 25, 134 ;
sitting at Westminster, 14, 87 fi.,
members of, detained by bad
roads, 86 ; on what principle
created, 214, its development, 421
Parson, Chaucer's, 123
Paston letters, 100 ff., 380
Patmer, John of, 133
Paul, St., 199, 384, 386, 389
Paul V, 443
Paula, St., 393 ff.
Paulinus, 395, 396
Payne, John, 323
Peasants, out of bond, 181, 234 ff.,.
239 ff., 421 ; at the tavern, 136,
at the drug sellers', 193, revolt
of the, 212, 276 ff., compared
with French, 277, 279, results of,
280, cursed by Langland, 293,
and the scepticism of the nobles,
393
Pedlars, 181, their temper, 234 fi.,.
long ignored by statutes, 235 fi.,.
content of their packs, 236 ff.,
at the fair, 232, Wordsworth's,-
253 ; 307, 4*9
Pegge, S., 159
Pelagrua, Cardinal de, 232
Penrose, John, a vintner, 239
Perceval, romance of, 198, 199
Percy, Henry, 404
Percy, Bishop "Thomas, 437
" Percy and Douglas," song of, 216
Perers, Alice, 134
Persia, dances in, 18, 220, 221 ;
poetry of, chanted, 194
Persians in Palestine, 393
Peter, St., 314, his ve.st, 329 ; 384
Peterborough, 347
Petit-DutaiUis, Ch., 276
Petrarch, 324

460

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

PetroneUa, St., 385
PhiUp II, Augustus, 333
Philip IV, the Fair, 93, 185
Philip VI, of Valois, 93, 397
Philippa, Queen, 134, 229
Physicians, 18, 183 ff., laws about,
188 ff.
Piccolomini, ^neas Sylvius, 339
Pie powder court, 249
^' Pierce the Ploughman's Crede,"
301
Piers, Johan, 258
"Piers Plowman" (Visions about),
19, 23, 42, 124, 133, 137, 143 ff.,
203, 207, 213, 218, 233 ff., 237,
246, 25-0, 293, 301, 307, 338, 368,
393, 400
Pilate, 201
Pilgrimages, vows of, remitted, 323,
325 ; Chief, 338, motives for,
338 ff., by proxy, 340, 357, 394 ;
various English,- 342 ff., 346 ff.,
how advertised," 344 ff., -Rey
nard's, 360, 446 ; Erasmus on,
362 ff.. More on, 363, restrained,
in England and France, 369 ff.,
various French, 370 ff., to Com
postela, 373 ff., indulgences
attached to, 383, to Rome,
384 ff., cost of, 389 ff., to the
Holy Land, 393 ff.
Pilgrims, 21, 24, inns for, 131 ;
181, 226, as news bringers, 263,
270, escaped villeins as, 273 ;
how attracted, 343 ff., on the
road to Canterbury, 34S, royal
and imperial, 332 ff. , their mixed
troups, their prayers, 337 ff.,
their amusements on the way,
339 ff., tale tellers, 360, visit the
curiosities and buy signs, 364 ff.,
418, professional, 367, their
speeches and liveliliood, 367, their
staffs and scrips, 362, 368 ff.,
false, 369, 420, permits for real,
369, oaths before leaving, 376,
uncomfortable at sea, 376 ff.,
offerings by, 380, attracted by
indulgences, 383 ff., how helped,
389 ff., go to Palestine and have
to pay the Saracen, 395 ff., 409,
413; 419
Pilgrims' Way, 352
Pisan, Christine de, 136, 329
Pius II, 339
Pius IV, 337
-Plague, the great, effect on labour
and wages, 263 ff.

Plato, 387
" Play of the SaCrament," 186
Players, common, 236
" Plowman's Tale," 301
Plymouth, 370
Poictiers, 201, 23r
Poissy-sur-Seine, 334
Pole, the de la. Earls of Suffolk, 244
Pollock, Sir Frederick, iir, 113
" Polycraticus," 218
Pompeii, 7, 8
Pontagium, 37
Pont du Gard, 33
Pontefract, 339, 341
Pont-Sainte-Maxence, Garnier de,
351, 365
Pont-Saint-Esprit, 32
Pontiff brothers, 32 ff.
Popes, and bridge building, 36, and
sanctuary, 174, condemn par
doners; 316 ff., at Avignon, are
abused, 3.gt
Porter, Nicholas le, 165 ff.
Porter, Simon, 64
Porto, 232
'PotheCkry,! Heywood's^, 189
Potter Heigham, 78 ,' f
" Povre Clere," le, 216 ' -J- ;
Powell, E., 276 ¦-'
Power, Robert, 133 '
Prague, 229
Pratt, Godfrey, 41 ff., 37, 61, 143
Preachers, wandering, 181, 283 ff.,
Wyclif's, 284 ff., RoUeof Hampole
as a, 290, 419, 421
Prest, Godfrey, coppersmith, 14
Prestbury, 178
Preston, Gilbert de, 429
" Promessi Sposi," 152
Prussia, hampers British trade, 241,
the pagans of, 391, 398
Pulteney, Wm., 74
Purveyors, royal, their exactions,
how remedied, 91 ff., 94 ff., 430 ff.
Putnam, Miss Bertha, 264
Pyne, C, 14, 31
Pythagoras, 387
Quacks, 24, 181, laws about, 188 ff.,
419
Questors, or pardoners, 313 ff., 44O
Quintilian, 323 '
Rabelais, 133, 330
Railton, Herbert, 126
Raven, Edward, 347
Reading, 348
Reapers, 19, 267

INDEX

461

Recluses, 142
Reims, 349
Relics, pardoners', 327 ff., at Exeter,
Westminster, the Ste-Chapelle,
328 ff. ; 343, at Walsingham, 362,
in various places, 363, at Amiens,
Paris, Chartres, etc.. 371 ff., at
Rome, 386 ff., Venice, 389, in
Holy Land, 413 ff.
Reville, Andre, on Abjuratio Regni,
169 ; 276
Reynard, his pilgrimage, 138, 360 ff.,
446 ff., as a preacher, 304 ; 332
Rhine country, the, 239
Rhodes, dogs at, 410, 411
Richard, St., 346
Richard I, Cceur de Lion, 354, 425
Richard II, 13, his portrait, 14 ;
20, 21, 47, 133 ff., 170, buys JISS.,
198, sees mystery plays, 201, his
minstrels, 204, pays a dancer,
220 ; 229, 231, 270, and the
peasants' revolt, 276 ; 278, 279,
280, 308, 309, 321, 369, 375, 398,
405, 439
Richard III, 172
Richard, prior, of He.xham, 160
Rideware, Sir Robert and Walter de,
150 ff., 249
Ringeston, Hugo de, 260
Ripert-Monclar, Marquis de, 36
Rishanger, 297
Ritson, John, 213, 437
Rivers, to be clear of hindrances, 243
Roads, 29 ff., Roman, 30 ff., repair
:\'pf, 4i2,.79ff., excessive, tax^s, 80,
in the East, 81, good,. of interest
for the king and monks, 82 ff.,
security of, 149 ff., cleared of
bushes, 136
Robbers, in sanctuary, 136 ff, ; 176
" Roberdesmen," 176, 236
Robert, St., of Knaresborough, 17-;
139, 141 ff-
Robertson, Wm., 8
Robin Hood, 213, 235
Rocamadour, 21, 363 ff., 372 ff.,
fair tresses at, 380
Rochester Bridge, 60, 62 ; 339
Rogers, Thorold, 32, 91, 99, 126, 149,
176, 219, 229, 252, 346
Rogier, Pierre (Clement VI), 392
Roland, 193, song of, 196, 296, 349,
at Rocamadour, 372
Rolle, Richard, of Hampole, 141 ff.,
290, 342
Romances of Troy, Rome, Arthur,
etc., 193 ff.

Roman de la Rose, ig8, 335, de Per
ceval, 198, de Renard, 136, 360 ff.,
447, de Rou, 20
Rome, 223, 317, 352, pilgrimages to,
361, 363, 368, 370, 384, 390, 398,
a pilgrim's history of, 3845.,.
relics at, 386 ff., wonders of, 388
398
Rome, Wm., a murderer, 164, 434
Romulus, and Remus, 231
Roncevaux, 349
Roper, Margaret, 48
" Rosa AngUca," r86 ff.
Rosels, Reginald of, 42
Rossetti, W. M., 387
Rouen, 389
Rouland, David, 331
Rouland, Roger, a chariot matter, 99,
Round Table romances, 56
Roxburghe Castle, 232
Rubens, 194
Rushes, as carpets, 122
Russell, John, 16
Rutebeuf, 19, on hermits, 147, his
herbalist, 184 ff.
Rymer, 373
Sacrilege, at York, 393
St. Alban's Abbey, 297, 303, 346
St. Anne d'Auray, 363
St. Bernard, the Great and Little, 396
St. Catherine of Mount Sinai, 384, 414
St. Davids, 346
St. Edmundsbury, 346
St. Evremond, 194
St. George's Day, 229
St. Giles fair, 249, 252
St. Gothard, 396
St. Hilaire, Barthelemy, 10
St. Ives, bridge at, 78
St. James of Compostela or of Galicia,.
370 ff. ; see Compostela
St. John of Jerusalem, order pf^
44, their pardoners, iig, 326
St. ilartin's le Grand, Londcn, 167,
170 ff- 435
St. Nectaire, 18
St. Neots, 64
St. Paul's, London, its sanctuary,
172 ff. ; 342, 428, 436
St. Prassede, 383
St. Prudence, 383
St. Sebastian, 386
St. Thomas chapel, 427
St. Vitus, 385
St. Vivian, 386
" Saint Vou," the, 387
Saintes, 44, 423

463

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

Salerno, Mme. Trote de, 184 ff., 187
Salzburg, 306
Salisbury, Earl of, 117
Salisbury, John of, 218
Salome, head downwards, 219 ff.
Salzmann, L. F., 238
Sanctuary, 18, prisoner flying to, 149,
privilege of, 137 ff,, seats or frid-
stools, 159 ff., registers, 163 ff. ; vio
lation of, 165 ff., at Westminster,
etc., 166 ff., watch outside, 168,
refugees to, forswear the realm,
168 ff., various kinds of refugees
to, 170 ff., St. Paul's, 172 ff. ; sup
pression of, 173 ff. ; 434 ff.
Sandwich, 370
Santa Maria deUe Grazie, 380
Santa Maria Maggiore, 386
Saracens, 397, of Tunis, 399 ff.,
should be converted, not killed,
400 ff-, tolerant and practical in
Palestine, 409, 413, 415 ; robbers
among, 412 ff.
Sarrebruck, Simon de, 418
¦" Satyre of the Thrie Estaits,'
Sauvage, Wm. le, 272
Scala Cell, 385
Scaliger, J. J., 48
Scarborough, its fish fair, 230
Scarth, H. M., 31
Scotland, wars with, 119, 178
230, 23r
Sculpture, from the nude, 344, 443
Seebohm, 263
Seneca, 293
-Seneschal, the King's, 107 ff.
Sens, 330
.Serfs, 213, 262
.Servants, 269 ff.
Seyssel, Claude de, 366 ff., 394
Shakespeare, 54, 74
Shalford, 19, 273, 274
Shene, 229
Sheriff, the, 80, 107, his functions,
III ff., exactions of, 121, 430
Sherwood forest, 213
Shipmen, 226, 236, 376
-Stripping, alternate growth and
decay, 240 ff.
Shorwalle, H2
Shrewsbury, 206
Sidney, Sir Philip, 216
Si^'^ismund, Emperor, 335
Sinai, Mount, 391, 414
Sir Gawayne," 197
" Sir Thopas," 198, 200
Skeat, W. W., 230, 301
Skinnerwell, 201

327

229,

Skirlawe, Bishop, 58
Skredington, 429
Smith, C. Roach, 364
Smith, Miss L. "Toulmin, 9, notes
by, 92, 208
Smithfield, 250, 347
Smollett, T., 122
Snayth, 426
" Solace of Pilgrims," 387
" Song of Roland," 349
Songs, satirical, 212, chief collection
of, 437 ff-
Sorcerers, 334
Southampton, 352, 370
Southwark, 48, 428
Spain, pardoners in, 331; see Com
postela
Spalding, Abbot of, 429
Spelman, H., 139
Spenser, Edmund, 74
Spoelberch, Wm., 296
Sprotborough, fridstool at, 18, i6r,
163
" Stacions of Rome," 387
Stafford, 150
Stanley, Dean, 330
Staple, the, 247 ff.
" Staple of News," 50
Stapleton, Walter, 172
Statius, 224
Statues, 344 ff., 363, 371, burnt,
347 ff-
Statutes, of Winchester, 176, 177;
well meant but inefficient, 154 ff.,
211; proclaimed, 229; on ped-^
lars, 235 ff , on the staple, 247 ;
on labourers, 264 ff., 271 ff., on
slanderers, 278, of Westminster,
278
Stephen, St., 389
Stermersworthe, Richard, a woolman,
284
Steward, the King's, 107, 108
Stocks, the, 19, 264, 269, 270 ff.
Stone, F., 78
Stourbridge fair, 230, 231
Stow, J., 43, 44, 47, 50, 61, 62
Stowe, church of, 429
Stratford-at-Bow, 40, 33
Stratford-on-Avon, bridge at, 53
Straw, Jack, 293
Strynger, Thos., 165, 434
Stubbs, Bishop, 421
Stubbes, Philip, on minstrels, 221 ff.
Students, travelling, 125 ff., 175,
begging, 236, 276
Sudbury, Simon, 442 ff.
Suffolk, Duke of, 212, 457 ff.

INDEX

46 J

Suitors, follow the court 108
Sully Prudhomme, 147
Superstitions, 302, 308. 333 ff., 393
Surrey, Duke of, 13
Surtees, 166
SwaU Bridge, 54
Swinfield, Bishop Richard, 116 ff.,
202
Swithin, St., 347
Sylvester, Pope, 386
Syria, 408, 409, 410
Tabor, Mount, 417
Taillefer, 195, 216
Taine, 291
¦" Tale of Beryn," 134, 364 ff.
Taverner, Ralph, M.P., 264
Taverns, 134 ff.
Taylor, P. T., 66
Teign, bridge on the, 66
Teignmouth, 66
Temple Bar, 84
Tewkesbury, bridge at, 78, 79
Thames, 43, 47, polluted, 123 ; 231,
428
Thebes, 224
Thegra, 366
Theodore, Archbishop, on indul
gences, 312
Theodosius the Great, 138
Theolonium, 80 . , .
Thieves, 136 ff., 176, 181, labourers
become, 270
Thomas, St., Aquinas, 89
Thomas, St., Becket, 13, 47, 74, 248,
279, the best healer, 338, pil
grimage to, 348 ff., life and death
of, 348 ff., his cult and shrine
destroyed, 355 ff.
Thomas, G. M., 411
Thompson, Sir E. Maunde, 9
Thompson, Richard, antiquary, 47,
53
Thompson, Yates, 350
Thorelstan, 272
" Thornton romances," 198 ft'.
Thorpe, Wm., 134, 285, on pil
grimages, 359 ff.
Thresk, Robert, a priest, 238
Thurkelby, Roger de, a judge, 261
Tinkers, 236
Tours, 372
Trade, arbitrarily regulated, 239 ff.,
foreign, 243 ff., in the Levant,
408, 414
Travelling, a merchant, 19, by sea,
21, dangerous, 30 ; royal and
lordly, 82 ff., 103, 430 ff.; 89,

Travelling — continued
ordinary, 90 ff., on horseback,
95, 100 ff., 103; in carriages,
95 ff., in horse litters, 99, loi.
monks and bishops. 113, from
Oxford to Newcastle and Cam
bridge to York, 126 ff., students.
173, its dangers, 149 ff., fast and
slow, 2},2 ff., merchants, 233 ff.,
243 ff., sea, 376 ff,, the English
fond of, 402
Trees, taken down, 156
Trenholme, 158, 139
Trent, Council of, 337, 444
Trevelyan, G. M., 276, 283
Trevisa, 333, 401
Trinoda Necessitas, 29, 3r, 37, 61
Tristram, romance of, 196
Tri Thlws Cymru, 78
Trivium, 302
" Troilus," Chaucer's, ig6, 197
Troo, 17
Troy, Duchess of, 384
Tuck, friar, 213
Tulle, 366
Tumblers, 181, 183, 194, 232
Tunbridge, 298
Tunis, 221, 397, 398 ff.
Turnbrigg, 426
Turns, of the sheriff, 112
Turpin, Archbishop, 349
Tutbury, 279
Tweed, bridge on the, 65
Tyburn, 133, 309
Tyndale, W., 363
Upatherle, H. and Th. of, 178
Urban II, 313
Urban V, on pardoners, 326, 441
Urban VI, 443
" Utopia," 48, 310
Uttoxeter, 186, 232
Valentre Bridge, 37, 69
Valon, de, 366
Van der Meulen, 371
Vendomois, 17
Venice, mountebanks of, 192 ; 239,
fleets and trade of, 243 ; 388,
relics at, 389 ; 396, 403, 407
Verard, Antoine, 49
" Vernicle," the, 363, 383
Verona, 219, 404
Vezelay, 372
" Vie de Gargantua," 23, 181
VieUe, the, 18, 207 ff.
View of Frankpledge, in, 11^, 135,
431 ff.

464

ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE

Villeins, 24, how emancipated,
259 ff., sold, 260, services due
by, 262, leave their district, 266 ff.,
federated, 270, interpret texts,
270 ff., send their children to
school, 283
Vinogradoff, 260
Viollet le Due, 35
Virgil, 388
Virgin, the, milk of, 347, 386, 416,
unworshipped by Saracens, 399,
relics of, in Palestine, 413 ff.
Vissher, 48
Volterra, 93
Vows, remitted, 323, 325
" Vox Clamantis," 307
Wace, 20
Wages, 263 ff., excessive, 263 ff.
Waits, 206
Wake, the lord of, 341
Wakefield Bridge, 14, 67
Walcott, 347
Wales, 40, bridges in, 70, 77, min
strels in, 212 ; 219, staple in,
247 ; 309
Wales, Prince of, the Black Prince,
154, 232
Walsingham, 21, its sanctuary, -158,
its pilgrimage, 329, 338, 347 ff.,
338, 362, 392 ff., 416
Walsingham, Thomas, 293, 297, on
friars, 303 ; 323, 330, 393
Walter, Hubert, 423
Waltham, 347
Walton, Robert de, a villein, 260
Walton Street, 81
Wapentakes, iii, 431
War, state of, caused by abuses,
134 ff , necessitates good roads, 83,
Scottish, 119, of the -Roses, 153
Ward, Henry, L.D., 437
Ware, Lord de la, 205
Warkworth, bridge at, 14, 71 ff.,
hermitage at, 142
Warner, G- F., 343
Warton, Thos., 205, 341
"Wastours," 156'. 236
"Waterford, staple at, 247
Wathsand mere, 261
Watling Street, 30
Wayfarers, carriers of news and
ideas, 263, 277 ff., 279, religious,
preach emancipation, 285 ff., con
clusion about the work of, 419 ff.
Webb, John, 20, 439
Welles, Lord, 47
Wels, John, 43

Werburge, St., 142
Werchin, de, 406
Westminster, road to, 84, parliament
sitting at, 86 ff., 301, 421 ; sanc
tuary at, 166, 170, 172 ff. ; 247,
fair at, 250 ; 264, 329, 346
Westmoreland, Countess of, 205
Wey, Wm., his pilgrimage to Com
postela, 373, on catacombs and
relics, 385 ff., on the Holy Land
and how to go there, 409 ff. ;
his souvenirs from Palestine, 417
Weyhill fair, 230
"Wheatly, 49
Whitby, 42, 142
Whitekirk, 339
Whittington, Sir Richard,244, 245, 297
Wife of Bath, 103, 103, 371
Wilfrid, St., 160
William III, King, 236
Wills, devotional bequests in, 394
Winchester, 149, 247, fair at, 249,
230, pilgrimages to, 347
Windsor, 229
Wines, trade in, 239
" Winter's Tale," 252
Wode, Agnes atte, 135
Wolves, 63
Wood, F. G.,'78
Worcester, 40
Wordsworth, 233
Workmen, perambulating, 181
Works of charity, the seven, 89
Wrangham, Jojin, 164, 434
Wright, A. B., 163
Wright, Thos., 200, 437
"Wurtham, Thos. of, 260
Wyatt, Sir Thos., 48
Wyclif, 20, 24, 166, 172, 266, his
poor priests, 284, influence of,
285 ; 286, 293, on friars, 298 ff. ;
336, on pilgrimages, 358 ff. ; 39I,.
400, 401
Wylynton, H. de, 342
Wyresdale, 35
Yarm, 38
Yarmouth, its fish fair, 230 ; 370
Ydoine, romance of, 196
York, 30, 39, bridge at, 73 ; 129, 169,
minstrels at, 206 ; 232, staple at,.
247 ; 261, prison at, 271 ; 347,
393, 426, plays, 201
Ypres, 233
Yule, Col., 406
Zousche, Master la, a clerk of the
wardrobe, 99

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